The Library
of
Literary History
pbrarg of f tierarg pst0rg
A LITERARY HISTORY OF INDIA. By R. W
FRAZER, LL.B.
A LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND. By DOUGLAS
HYDE, LL.D.
A LITERARY HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES.
By BARRETT WENDELL.
Other Volumes in Preparation.
A LITERARY HISTORY OF THE JEWS. By
ISRAEL ABRAHAMS.
ETC. ETC. ETC.
There is for every nation a history, which does not respond to the
trumpet-call of battle, which does not limit its interests to the conflict of
dynasties. This — the history of intellectual growth and artistic achievement
— if less romantic than the popular panorama of kings and queens, finds its
material in imperishable masterpieces, and reveals to the student something
at once more vital and more picturesque than the quarrels of rival parlia-
ments. Nor is it in any sense unscientific to shift the point of view from
politics to literature. It is but a fashion of history which insists that a
nation lives only for her warriors, a fashion which might long since have
been ousted by the commonplace reflection that, ir spite of history, the poets
are the true masters of the earth. If all record of a nation's progress were
blotted out, and its literature were yet left us, might we not recover the out-
lines of its lost history ?
It is, then, with the literature of nations, that the present series is
concerned.
Each volume will be entrusted to a distinguished scholar, and the aid of
foreign men of letters will be invited whenever the perfection of the series
demands it.
THE LIBRARY
OF
LITERARY HISTORT
A Literary History of Ireland
CASE OF
MOLAISE'S
GOSPELS.
A Literary History
of Ireland
From Earliest Times to the Present Day
By
Douglas Hyde, LL.D., M.R.I. A.
[An Craoibhfn Aoibhinn]
SECOND IMPRESSION
, A
New York
Charles Scribner's Sons
1901
SDeDication,
TO THE MEMBERS OF THE GAELIC LEAGUE,
THE ONLY BODY IN IRELAND WHICH APPEARS TO
REALISE THE FACT THAT IRELAND HAS A PAST, HAS A
HISTORY, HAS A LITERATURE, AND THE ONLY BODY IN
IRELAND WHICH SEEKS TO RENDER THE PRESENT A
RATIONAL CONTINUATION OF THE PAST,
I DEDICATE
THIS ATTEMPT AT A REVIEW OF THAT LITERATURE
WHICH DESPITE ITS PRESENT NEGLECTED POSITION
THEY FEEL AND KNOW TO BE A TRUE
POSSESSION OF NATIONAL
IMPORTANCE.
DO CHONNRADH NA GAEDHEILGE.
A Chonnradh chaoin, a Chonnradh choir,
Rinn obair mhor gan or gan cabhair,
Glacaidh an dos a dlighim daoibh,
Guidhim, glacaidh go caoimh mo leabhar.
A chdirde cleibh is iomdha Id
D'oibrigheamar go bredgh le ch&ile,
Gan clampar, agusfosgan cad,
'S da mhead dr dteas', gan puinn di-chiille.
Chuireabhar suil 'san bhfear bhi dall,
Thugabhar cluas donfhear bhi bodhar,
Glacaidh an cios do bheirim daoibh,
Guidhim, glacaidh go caoimh mo leabhar.
\
PREFACE
THE present volume has been styled — in order to make it a
companion book to other of Mr. Unwin's publications — a
" Literary History of Ireland," but a " Literary History of
Irish Ireland " would be a more correct title, for I have ab-
stained altogether from any analysis or even mention of the
works of Anglicised Irishmen of the last two centuries. Their
books, as those of Farquhar, of Swift, of Goldsmith, of Burke,
find, and have always found, their true and natural place in
every history of English literature that has been written,
whether by Englishmen themselves or by foreigners.
My object in this volume has been to give a general view of
the literature produced by the Irish-speaking Irish, and to
reproduce by copious examples some of its more salient, or at
least more characteristic features.
In studying the literature itself, both that of the past and
that of the present, one of the things which has most forcibly
struck me is the marked absence of the purely personal note,
the absence of great predominating names, or of great pre-
dominating works ; while just as striking is the almost uni-
versal diffusion of a traditional literary taste and a love of
literature in the abstract amongst all classes of the native Irish.
The whole history of Irish literature shows how warmly the
efforts of all who assisted in its production were appreciated.
x PREFACE
The greatest English bard of the Elizabethan age was allowed
by his countrymen to perish of poverty in the streets of
London, while the pettiest chief of the meanest clan would
have been proud to lay his hearth and home and a share of his
wealth at the disposal of any Irish " ollarhh." The love for
literature of a traditional type, in song, in poem, in saga,
was, I think, more nearly universal in Ireland than in any
country of western Europe, and hence that which appears to-
me to be of most value in ancient Irish literature is not that
whose authorship is known, but rather the mass of traditional
matter which seems to have grown up almost spontaneously,
and slowly shaped itself into the literary possession of an entire
nation. An almost universal acquaintance with a traditional
literature was a leading trait amongst the Irish down to the
last century, when every barony and almost every townland
still possessed its poet and reciter, and song, recitation, music,
and oratory were the recognised amusements of nearly the
whole population. That population in consequence, so far as
wit and readiness of language and power of expression went,,
had almost all attained a remarkably high level, without how-
ever producing any one of a commanding eminence. In col-
lecting the floating literature of the present day also, the
unknown traditional poems and the Ossianic ballads and the
stories of unknown authorship are of greater value than the
pieces of bards who are known and named. In both cases,
that of the ancient and that of the modern Irish, all that is of
most value as literature, was the property and in some sense
the product of the people at large, and it exercised upon them
a most striking and potent influence. And this influence may
be traced amongst the Irish-speaking population even at the
present day, who have, I may almost say, one and all, a re-
markable command of language and a large store of traditional
literature learned by heart, which strongly differentiates them
from the Anglicised products of the " National Schools " ta
the bulk of whom poetry is an unknown term, and amongst
PREFACE xi
whom there exists little or no trace of traditional Irish feelings,
or indeed seldom of any feelings save those prompted by (when
they read it) a weekly newspaper.
The exact extent of the Irish literature still remaining in
manuscript has never been adequately determined. M. d'Arbois
de Jubainville has noted 133 still existing manuscripts, all
copied before the year 1600, and the whole number which he
has found existing chiefly in public libraries on the Continent
and in the British Isles amounts to 1,009. But many others
have since been discovered, and great numbers must be
scattered throughout the country in private libraries, and
numbers more are perishing or have recently perished of
neglect since the " National Schools " were established.
Jubainville quotes a German as estimating that the literature
produced by the Irish before the seventeenth century, and
still existing, would fill a thousand octavo volumes. It is hard
to say, however, how much of this could be called literature in
a true sense of the word, since law, medicine, and science were
probably included in the calculation. O'Curry, O'Longan,
and O'Beirne Crowe catalogued something more than half the
manuscripts in the Royal Irish Academy, and the catalogue of
contents filled thirteen volumes containing 3,448 pages. To
these an alphabetic index of the pieces contained was made in
three volumes, and an index of the principal names, etc., in
thirteen volumes more. From a rough calculation, based on
an examination of these, I should place the number of different
pieces catalogued by them at about ten thousand, ranging from
single quatrains or even single sentences to long poems and
epic sagas. But in the Academy alone, there are nearly as
many more manuscripts which still remain uncatalogued.
It is probably owing to the extreme difficulty of arriving at
any certain conclusions as to the real extent of Irish literature
that no attempt at a consecutive history of it has ever pre-
viously been made. Despite this difficulty, there is no doubt
that such a work would long ago have been attempted had it
xii PREFACE
not been for the complete breakdown and destruction of Irish
Ireland which followed the Great Famine, and the unexpected
turn given to Anglo-Irish literature by the efforts of the
Young Ireland School to compete with the English in their
own style, their own language, and their own models.
For the many sins of omission and commission in this
volume I must claim the reader's kind indulgence ; nobody can
be better aware of its shortcomings than I myself, and the only
excuse that I can plead is that over so much of the ground I have
had to be my own pioneer. I confidently hope, however, that
in the renewed interest now being taken in our native civi-
lisation and native literature some scholar far more fully
equipped for his task than I, may soon render this volume
superfluous by an ampler, juster, and more artistic treatment
of what is really a subject of great national importance.
National or important, however, it does not appear to be
considered in these islands, where outside of the University of
Oxford — which has given noble assistance to the cause of Celtic
studies — sympathisers are both few and far between. Indeed,
I fancy that anybody who has applied himself to the subject of
Celtic literature would have a good deal to tell about the
condescending contempt with which his studies have been
regarded by his fellows. " I shall not easily forget," said Dr
Petrie, addressing a meeting of the Royal Irish Academy upon
that celebrated example of early Celtic workmanship the Tara
Brooch, " that when in reference to the existence of a similar
remain of ancient Irish art, I had first the honour to address
myself to a meeting of this high institution, I had to encounter
the incredulous astonishment of the illustrious Dr. Brinkley "
{of Trinity College, President of the Academy] " which was
implied in the following remark, ' Surely, sir, you do not mean
to tell us that there exists the slightest evidence to prove that
the Irish had any acquaintance with the arts of civilised life
anterior to the arrival in Ireland of the English ?' nor shall I
PREFACE xiii
forget that in the scepticism which this remark implied nearly
all the members present very obviously participated." Exactly
the same feeling which Dr. Petrie encountered was prevalent
in my own alma mater in the eighties, where one of our most
justly popular lecturers said — in gross ignorance but perfect
good faith — that the sooner the Irish recognised that before the
arrival of Cromwell they were utter savages, the better it would
be for everybody concerned ! Indeed, it was only the other
day that one of our ablest and best known professors protested
publicly in the Contemporary Review against the enormity of
an Irish bishop signing so moderate, and I am sure so reason-
able a document, as a petition asking to have Irish children
who knew no English, taught through the medium of the
language which they spoke. Last year, too, another most
learned professor of Dublin University went out of his way to
declare that " the mass of material preserved [in the Irish
manuscripts] is out of all proportion to its value as 'literature,'"
and to insist that " in the enormous mass of Irish MSS. pre-
served, there is absolutely nothing that in the faintest degree
rivals the splendours of the vernacular literatures of the Middle
Ages," that " their value as literature is but small," and that
"for educational purposes save in this limited sense [of linguistic
study] they are wholly unsuited," winding up with the extra-
ordinary assertion that " there is no solid ground for supposing
that the tales current at the time of our earliest MSS. were
much more numerous than the tales of which fragments have
come down to us." As to the civilisation of the early Irish
upon which Petrie insisted, there is no longer room for the
very shadow of a doubt ; but whether the literature which they
produced is so utterly valueless as this, and so utterly devoid of
all interest as " literature," the reader of this volume must
judge for himself. I should be glad also if he were to institute
a comparison between " the splendours of the vernacular
literatures " of Germany, England, Spain, and even Italy and
France, prior to the year 1000, and that of the Irish, for I am
xiv PREFACE
very much mistaken if in their early development of rhyme,
alone, in their masterly treatment of sound, and in their
absolutely unique and marvellous system of verse-forms, the
Irish will not be found to have created for themselves a place
alone and apart in the history of European literatures.
I hardly know a sharper contrast in the history of human
thought than the true traditional literary instinct which four
years ago prompted fifty thousand poor hard-working Irishmen
in the United States to contribute each a dollar towards the
foundation of a Celtic chair in the Catholic University of
Washington in the land of their adoption, choosing out a fit
man and sending him to study under the great Celticists of
Germany, in the hope that his scholarship might one day
reflect credit upon the far-off country of their birth ; while in
that very country, by far the richest college in the British Isles,
one of the wealthiest universities in the world, allows its so-
called " Irish professorship " to be an adjunct of its Divinity
School, founded and paid by a society for — the conversion of
Irish Roman Catholics through the medium of their own
language !
This is the more to be regretted because had the unique
manuscript treasures now shut up in cases in the underground
room of Trinity College Library, been deposited in any other
seat of learning in Europe, in Paris, Rome, Vienna, or Berlin,
there would long ago have been trained up scholars to read
them, a catalogue of them would have been published, and
funds would have been found to edit them. At present the
Celticists of Europe are placed under the great disadvantage of
having to come over to Dublin University to do the work that
it is not doing for itself.
It is fortunate however that the spread of education within
the last few years (due perhaps partly to the establishment
of the Royal University, partly to the effects of Intermediate
Education, and partly to the numerous literary societies which
working upon more or less national lines have spontaneously
PREFACE xv
sprung up amongst the Irish people themselves) has, by taking
the prestige of literary monopoly out of the hands of Dublin
University, to a great extent undone the damage which had
so long been caused to native scholarship by its attitude.
It was the more necessary to do this, because the very fact
that it had never taken the trouble to publish even a printed
catalogue of its Irish manuscripts — as the British Museum
authorities have done — was by many people interpreted, I
believe, as a sort of declaration of their worthlessness.
In dealing with Irish proper names I have experienced the
same difficulty as every one else who undertakes to treat of
Irish history. Some native names, especially those with
4i mortified " or aspirated letters, look so unpronounceable as to
prove highly disconcerting to an English reader. The system
I have followed is to leave the Irish orthography untouched,
but in cases where the true pronunciation differed appreciably
from the sound which an English reader would give the letters,
I have added a phonetic rendering of the Irish form in
brackets, as " Muighmheadhon [Mwee-va-on], Lughaidh
[Lewy]." There are a few names such as Ossian, Meve,
Donough, MuiTough and others, which have been almost
adopted into English, and these forms I have generally retained
— perhaps wrongly — but my desire has been to throw no unne-
cessary impediments in the way of an English reader ; I have
always given the true Irish form at least once. Where the
word " mac " is not part of a proper name, but really means
"son of" as in Finn mac Cumhail, I have printed it with
a small " m " ; and in such names as " Cormac mac Art "
I have usually not inflected the last word, but have written
" Art " not " Airt," so as to avoid as far as possible confusing
the English reader.
I very much regret that I have found it impossible, owing
to the brief space of time between printing and publication,
to submit the following chapters to any of my friends for
xvi PREFACE
their advice and criticism. I beg, however, to here express
my best thanks to my friend Father Edmund Hogan, S.J.,
for the numerous memoranda which he was kind enough to
give me towards the last chapter of this book, that on the
history of Irish as a spoken language, and also to express my
regret that the valuable critical edition of the Book of Hymns
by Dr. Atkinson and Dr. Bernard, M. Bertrand's " Religion
Gauloise," and Miss Hull's interesting volume on " Cuchullin
Saga," which should be read in connection with my chapters
on the Red Branch cycle, appeared too late for me to make
use of.
RATH-TREAGH, OIDHCHE SAMHNA
MDCCCXCIX.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PACK
I. WHO WERE THE CELTS? i
II. EARLIEST ALLUSIONS TO IRELAND FROM FOREIGN
SOURCES ...... 17
III. EARLY HISTORY DRAWN FROM NATIVE SOURCES . 25
IV. How FAR CAN NATIVE SOURCES BE RELIED ON ? . 38
V. THE PRE-MILESIAN FABLE AND EARLY PANTHEON 44
VI. EVIDENCE OF TOPOGRAPHY AND GENEALOGY . 56
VII. DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE . . 70
VIII. CONFUSION BETWEEN GODS AND MEN . . 77
IX. DRUIDISM ...... 82
X. THE IRISH ELYSIUM AND BELIEF IN REBIRTH . 94
XI. EARLY USE OF LETTERS, OGAM AND ROMAN . 105
v XII. EARLY IRISH CIVILISATION .... 122
XIII. ST. PATRICK AND THE EARLY MISSIONARIES . 133
XIV. ST. BRIGIT . . . . .156
XV. COLUMCILLE ...... 166
/ XVI. THE FIRST SCHOOLS OF CHRISTIAN IRELAND . 192
XVII. THEIR FAME AND TEACHING .... 215
XVIII. CONFLICTS WITH THE CIVIL POWER . . . 225
xviii CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
XIX. THE BARDIC SCHOOLS .... 239
XX. THE SUGGESTIVELY PAGAN ELEMENT IN IRISH
LITERATURE . . . . .251
•/XXL THE OLDEST BOOKS AND POEMS . . .263
• XXII. EARLY SAGA AND ROMANCE . . . 276
XXIII. THE MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE . . .281
XXIV. THE HEROIC OR RED BRANCH CYCLE— CUCHU-
LAIN ...... 293
XXV. DEIRDRE ...... 302
XXVI. THE TAIN Bo CHUAILGNE . . . . 319
XXVII. THE DEATH OF CUCHULAIN . . .341
XXVIII. OTHER SAGAS OF THE RED BRANCH . . 354
XXIX. THE FENIAN CYCLE . . . .363
XXX. MISCELLANEOUS ROMANCE .... 387
XXXI. PRE-DANISH POETS ..... 405
XXXII. THE DANISH PERIOD .... 419
XXXIII. FROM CLONTARF TO THE NORMAN CONQUEST . 443
XXXIV. SUDDEN ARREST OF IRISH DEVELOPMENT . 452
XXXV. FOUR CENTURIES OF DECAY . . . 465
XXXVI. DEVELOPMENT OF IRISH POETRY . . . 479
XXXVII. THE OSSIANIC POEMS . . . .498
XXXVIII. THE LAST OF THE CLASSIC POETS . . 514
XXXIX. RISE OF A NEW SCHOOL .... 539
XL. PROSE WRITERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 552
XLI. THE IRISH ANNALS. .... 573
XLII. THE BREHON LAWS . . . .583
XLIII. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY . . 591
XLIV. THE HISTORY OF IRISH AS A SPOKEN LANGUAGE 608
INDEX ........ 639
Literary History of Ireland
CHAPTER I
WHO WERE THE CELTS ?
rHO were those Celts, of whose race the Irish are to-day
perhaps the most striking representatives, and upon whose past
the ancient literature of Ireland can best throw light ?
Like the Greeks, like the Romans, like the English, this
great people, which once ruled over a fourth of Europe, sprang
from a small beginning and from narrow confines. The
earliest home of the race from which they spread their conquer-
ing arms may be said, roughly speaking, to have lain along
both banks of the upper Danube, and in that portion of
Europe comprised to-day in the kingdoms of Bavaria and
Wiirtemberg and the Grand Duchy of Baden, with the
country drained by the river Maine to the east of the Rhine
basin. In other words, the Celtic race and the Celtic language
sprang from the heart of what is to-day modern Germany, and
issuing thence established for over two centuries a vast empire
held together by the ties of political unity and a common
language over all North-west and Central Europe.
The vast extent of the territory conquered and colonised by
the Celts, and the unity of their speech, may be conjectured
from an examination of the place-names of Celtic origin which
A i
2 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
either still exist or figure as having existed in European
history.1
The Celts seem to have been first known to Greek — that is,
to European history — under the semi-mythological name of
the Hyperboreans,2 an appellation which remained in force
from the sixth to the fourth century before Christ. The
name Celt or Kelt 3 first makes its appearance towards the year
500 B.C., in the geography of Hecataeus of Miletum, and is
thereafter used successively by Herodotus, Xenophon, Plato,
and Aristotle, and from that time forward it seems to have
been employed by the Greek scholars and historians as a
generic term whereby to designate the Celts of the Continent.
Soon afterwards the word Galatian came also into use,4 and
was used as a synonym for Celt. In the first century B.C.,
however, the discovery was made that the Germans and the
Celts, who had been hitherto confounded in the popular esti-
mation, were really two different peoples, a fact which Julius
Caesar was almost the first to point out. Diodorus Siculus,
1 Take, for instance, the Celtic word duno-nt Latinised dunum, which is
the Irish dun " castle " or " fortress," so common in Irish topography, as in
Dunmore, Dunsink, Shandun, &c. There are over a dozen instances of
this word in France, nearly as many in Great Britain, more than half a
dozen in Spain, eight or nine in Germany, three in Austria, a couple in
the Balkan States, three more in Switzerland, one at least (Lug-dun, now
Leyden) in the Low Countries, one in Portugal, one in Piedmont, one in
South Russia.
Celtic was once spoken from Ireland to the Black Sea, although the
population who can how speak Celtic dialects is not more than three or four
millions. As for Celtic archaeological remains " on les trouve tant dans
nos musees nationaux (en particulier au Musee de Saint Germain) que dans
les collections publiques de la Hongrie, de 1'Autriche, de la Hesse, de la
Boheme, du Wurtemburg, du pays de Bade, de la Suisse, de 1' Italic
(Bertrand and Reinach, p. 3).
3 K€\T-O£. The Greeks, the Latins, and the Celts themselves pronounced
Kelt, as do the modern Germans. It is against the genius of the French
language to pronounce the c hard, but not against that of the English, who
consequently had better say Kelt.
WHO WERE THE CELTS? 3
accordingly, struck by this discovery, translates Caesar's Gal/us
or Gaul by the word Celt, and his Germanus or German by
the word Galatian, while the other Greek historian, Dion Cassius,
does the exact opposite, calling the Celts " Galatians," and the
Germans "Celts " ! The examples thus set, however, were the
result of ignorance and were never followed. Plutarch treats
the two words as identical, as do Strabo, Pausanias and all
other Greek writers.
The word Celt itself is probably of very ancient origin, and
was, no doubt, in use 800 or 1,000 years before Christ.1 It
cannot, however, be proved that it is a generic Celtic name for
the Celtic race, and none of the present Celtic-speaking races
have preserved it in their dialects. Jubainville derives it, very
doubtfully I should think, from a Celtic root found in the old
Irish verb "ar-CHELL-aim" ("I plunder") and the old substantive
to-CHELL ("victory") ; while he derives Galatian from a Celtic
substantive now represented by the Irish gal2 ("bravery").
This latter word " Galatian " is one which the German peoples
never adopted, and it appears to have only come into use sub-
sequently to their revolt against their Celtic masters. After the
break-up of the Celtic Empire it was employed to designate the
eastern portion of the race, while the inhabitants of Gaul were
called Celtae and those of Spain Celtici or Celtiberi, but the
Greeks called all indifferently by the common name of Galatians.
The Romans termed the Celts Galli, or Gauls, but they
used the geographical term Gallia, or Gaul, in a restricted
sense, first for the country inhabited by the Celts in North
1 As is proved, according to Jubainville, by its having made its way
into German before the so-called Laut-verschiebung took place, to the
laws of which it submitted, for out of Celtis, the feminine form of it, they
have made Childis, as in the Frank-Merovingian Bruni-Childis or
Brunhild, and the old Scandinavian Hildr, the war-goddess.
2 This was actually a living word as recently as ten years ago. I knew
an old man who often used it in the sense of "spirit," " fire," "energy" :
he used to say cuir gal a nn, meaning do it bravely, energetically. This
was in the county Roscommon. I cannot say that I have heard the word
elsewhere.
4 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
Italy upon their own side of the Alps, and after that for the
Celtic territory conquered by Rome upon the other side of the
Alps.
The Germans appear to have called the Celts Wolah, a
name derived from the Celtic tribe the Volcae, who were so
long their neighbours, out of which appellation came the
Anglo-Saxon Wealh and the modern English " Welsh."
There is one curious characteristic distinguishing, from its
very earliest appearance, the Celtic language from its Indo-
European sisters : this is the loss of the letter p both at the
beginning of a word and when it is placed between two
vowels.1 This dropping of the letter p had already given to
the Celtic language a special character of its own, at the time
when breaking forth from their earliest home the Celts crossed
the Rhine and proceeded, perhaps a thousand years before
Christ, to establish themselves in the British Isles. The Celts
who first colonised Ireland said, for instance, atir for pater,
but they had not yet experienced, nor did they ever experience,
that curious linguistic change which at a later time is assumed
to have come over the Celts of the Continent and caused
them to not only recover their faculty of pronouncing />,
but to actually change into a p the Indo-European guttural
q. Their descendants, the modern Irish, to this very day
retain the primitive word-forms which had their origin a
thousand years before Christ. So much so is this the case
that the Welsh antiquary Lhuyd, writing in the last century,
asserted, and with truth, that there were " scarce any words
in the Irish besides what are borrowed from the Latin or
some other language that begin with />, insomuch that in
an ancient alphabetical vocabulary I have by me, that letter is
omitted."2 Even with the introduction' of Christianity and
x Thus the Greek vTrtp, Latin s-uper, German iiber is ver in ancient Celtic
(for in Old Irish, ar in the modern language), platanus becomes litano-s
(Irish leathan), irapd becomes are, and so on.
a Lhuyd's " Comparative Etymology," title i. p. 21. Out of over 700 pages
in O'Reilly's Irish dictionary only twelve are occupied with the letter/.
WHO WERE THE CELTS? 5
the knowledge of Latin the ancient Irish persisted in their
repugnance to this letter, and made of the Latin Tasch-a
(Easter) the word Casg, and of the Latin purpur-a the Irish
curcur.
But meantime the Continental Celts had either — as Jubain-
ville seems to think — recovered their faculty for pronouncing
/>, or else — as Rhys believes — been overrun by other semi-Celts
who, owing to some strong non-Aryan intermixture, found q
repugnant to them, and changed it into p. This appears to have
taken place prior to the year 500 B.C., for it was at about this
time that they, having established themselves round the Seine
and Loire and north of the Garonne, overran Spain, carrying
everywhere with them this comparatively newly adopted />,
as we can see by their tribal and place-names. They appeared
in Italy sometime about 400 B.C.,1 founded their colony in
Galatia about 279 B.C., and afterwards sent another swarm into
Great Britain, and to all these places they bore with them this
obtrusive letter in place of the primitive ^, the Irish alone
resisting it, for the Irish represented a first off-shoot from the
cradle of the race, an off-shoot which had left it at a time
when q represented />, and not p q. Hence it is that Welsh is
so full of the p sound which the primitive Irish would never
adopt, as a glance at some of the commonest words in both
languages will show.
English : Son tree head person worm feather everyone.
Welsh : Map prenn pen nep pryv pluv pa.up.
Irish : Mac crann cenn nech cruiv 2 duv 2 each.
So that even the Irish St. Ciaran becomes Piaran in Wales.3
1 Probably for the second time. MM. Bertrand and Reinach seem to
have proved that the Cisalpine peoples of North Italy who were under the
dominion of the Etruscans were Celtic in manners and costume, and
probably in language also. See " Les Celtes dans les vallees du Po et du
Danube." Chapter on La Gaule Cisalpine.
2 Rather " cruimh " and " clumh," the mh being pronounced ».
3 In this matter of labialism Greek stands to some small extent with
regard to Latin, as Welsh to Irish. Nor is Latin itself exempt from it ;
compare the labialised Latin sept-em with the more primitive Irish secht.
6 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
The Celts invaded Italy about the year 400 B.C., and
stormed Rome a few years later. They were at this time at
the height of their power. From about the year 500 to 300
B.C. they appear to have possessed a very high degree of
political unity, to have been led by a single king,1 and to have
followed with signal success a wise and consistent external
policy. The most important events in their history during
this period were the three successful wars which they waged—
first against the Carthaginians, out of whose hands they wrested
the peninsula of Spain ; secondly in Italy against the Etruscans,
which ended in their making themselves masters of the north
of that country ; and thirdly against the Illyrians along the
Danube. All of these wars were followed by large accessions
of territory. One of the most striking features of their
external policy during this period was their close alliance with
the Greeks, whose commercial rivalry with the Phoenicians
naturally brought them into relations with the Celtic enemies
of Carthaginian power in Spain, relations from which they
reaped much advantage, since the necessity of making head
against the Celtic -invaders of Spain must have seriously
crippled the Carthaginian power, at the very time when, as
ally of the Persians, she attacked the Greeks in Sicily, and lost
the battle of Himera on the same day that the Persians lost
that of Salamis. Greek writers of the fourth century speak of
the Celts as practising justice, of having nearly the same
manners and customs as the Greeks, and they notice their
hospitality to Grecian strangers.2 Their war with the Etruscans
in North Italy completed the ruin of an hereditary enemy of
1 See Livy's account of Ambicatus, who seems to have been a kind of
Celtic Charlemagne, or more probably the equivalent of the Irish ard-righ.
Livy probably exaggerates his importance.
3 Cf. the remarkable verses quoted by d'Arbois de Jubainville of
Scymnus of Chio, following Ephorus :
'* XjObttrat <5c KeXroi roif
t%ovT£Q ouc€iorara TT/oog rr}v 'EXXada
Sid TUQ VTTOGOX&C; rutv i
WHO WERE THE CELTS? 7
the Greeks,1 and their war with the Illyrians no doubt largely
strengthened the hands of Philip, the father of Alexander the
Great, and enabled him to throw off the tribute which the
Illyrians had imposed upon Macedonia. Nor did Alexander
himself embark upon his expedition into Asia without having
first assured himself of the friendship of the Celts. He
received their ambassadors with cordiality, called them his
friends, and received from them a promise of alliance. " If we
fulfil not our engagement," said they, " may the sky falling upon
us crush us, may the earth opening swallow us up, may the sea
overflowing its borders drown us," and we may well believe ;
that these were the very words used by the Celtic chieftains j
when we find in an Irish saga committed to writing about the '
seventh century 2 the Ulster heroes swearing to their king when
he wished to leave his wing of the battle to repel the attacks
of a rival, and saying, " heaven is over us and earth is under
us and sea is round about us, and unless the firmament fall
with its star-showers upon the face of the earth, or unless
the earth be destroyed by earthquake, or unless the ridgy,
blue-bordered sea come over the expanse ( ?) of life, we shall
not give one inch of ground."
While the ambassadors were drinking the young king asked
them what was the thing they most feared, thinking, says the
historian, that they would say himself, but their answer was
quite different. " We fear no one," they said ; u there is
only one thing that we fear, which is, that the heavens may
fall upon us ; but the friendship of such a man as you we
value more than everything," whereat the king, no doubt
considerably astonished, remarked in a low voice to his
courtiers what a vainglorious people these Celts were.3
1 By this war the newly-arrived bands drove out the Etruscan aristocracy
and took its place, ruling over a population of what were really their Celtic
kinsmen.
8 The Tain Bo Chuailgne.
3 [KfXrotig] a7r£7T€/A»//6, roerovrov iiirtiirutv on a\a£oVef KeXrot elaiv (Arrian,
bk. i. chap. iv.).
8 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
All through the life of Alexander the Celts and Mace-
donians continued on good terms, and amongst the many envoys
who came to Babylon to salute the youthful conqueror of
Persia, appeared their representatives also. Some forty years
later, however, this good understanding came to an end, and
the Celts overthrew and slew in battle the Macedonian ruler
Ptolemy Keraunos about 280 B.C.
With the Romans, as with the Greeks, the relations of the
Celts were, during the fifth and fourth century B.C., upon the
whole friendly, and their hostility to the Etruscans must have
tended naturally to render them and the Romans mutual allies.
The battle of Allia, fought on the i8th of July, 390 B.C., and
the storming of Rome three days later, were a punishment
inflicted on the Romans by the Celts in their exasperation
at seeing the Roman ambassadors, contrary to the right of
nations, assisting their enemies the Etruscans under the walls
of Clusium, but these events appear to have been followed by
a long peace.1
It is only in the third century B.C. that the hitherto
victorious and widely-colonising Celts appear to have laid
aside their internal political unity and to have lost their
hitherto victorious tactics. The Germans, over whom they
had for centuries domineered and whom they had deprived of
their independence, rise against them about 300 B.C., and
drive out their former conquerors from between the Rhine and
* See Livy, book v. chap, xxxvi. : " Ibi, jam urgentibus Romanam urbem
fatis, legati contra jus gentium arma capiunt, nee id clam esse potuit, quum
ante signa Etruscorum tres nobilissimi fortissimi-que Romance juventutis
pugnarent. Tantum eminebat peregrina virtus. Quin etiam Q. Fabius
erectus extra aciem equo, ducem Gallorum, ferociter in ipsa signa Etrus-
corum incursantem, per latus transfixum hasta, occidit : spolia-que ejus
legentem Galli agnovere, perque totem aciem Romanum legatum esse
signum datum est. Omissa inde in Clusinos ira, receptui canunt minantes
Romanis." It was the refusal of the Romans to give satisfaction for this
outrage that first brought the Gauls upon them.
Jubainville rejects as fabulous the self-contradicting accounts of Livy
about Roman wars with the Celts during the next forty years after the
storming of Rome.
I
WHO WERE THE CELTS? g
the Black Sea, from between the Elbe and the Maine. The
Celts fall out with the Romans and are beaten at Sentinum in
295 B.C. ; they ally themselves with their former enemies the
Etruscans, and are again beaten in 283 B.C. and lose territory.
They cease their alliance with the Greeks, and are guilty of
the shameful folly of pillaging the temple of Delphi, an act
of brigandage from which no good results could come, and
from which no acquisition of territory resulted. They estab-
lished a colony in Asia Minor in 278 B.C., successfully indeed,
but absolutely cut off from the rest of the Celtic Empire, and
such as in any federation of the Celtic tribes could only be a
source of weakness. Again, about the same time, we see
Celts driving out and supplanting Celts in the districts
between the Rhine, the Seine, and the Marne. In 262 B.C.
we find a body of three or four thousand Celts assisting their
former foes the Carthaginians at the siege of Agrigentum,
where they perish. Many of the Celts now took foreign
service. It was at their instigation that the war of mer-
cenaries broke out, which at one time brought Carthage to
the very verge of destruction.
Only two centuries and a half, as Jubainville remarks, had
elapsed since the Celts had conquered Spain from the Phoeni-
cians, and only a hundred and thirty years since they had
taken Rome, but their victorious political unity had already
begun to break up and crumble, and now Rome and Carthage
commenced that deadly duel in which the victor was destined
to impose his sway upon the ruins of the Celtic Empire as
well as on that of Alexander — impose it, in fact, upon all the
world then known to the Greeks, except only the extreme east.
One of the circumstances which must have helped most
materially to break up the Celtic Empire was the successful
revolt of the Germans against their former masters. The
relation of the German to the Celtic tribes is very obscure
and puzzling. The ancient Greek historians of the sixth,
fifth, and fourth centuries B.C., who tell us so much about the
io LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
Celts, know absolutely nothing of the Germans. As early as
the year 500 B.C. Hecataeus of Miletum is able to name three
peoples and two cities of India. But of the Germans, who
were so much nearer to Marseilles than the nearest point of
India is to the most eastern Greek colony, he says not a word.
Ephorus, in the fourth century, knows of only one people to
the extreme west, and they are the Celts, and their immediate
neighbours are the Scythians. He knows of no intermediate
state or nation. Where, then, were the Germans ?
The explanation lies, according to Jubainville, in this, that
even before this period the German had been conquered by
the Celt and become subordinated to him. The Greek
historians knew of no independent state bordering upon the
Scythians except the Celtic Empire alone, because none such
existed. In the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., and perhaps as
early as the seventh and sixth, the Germans had been subdued
and had lost their independence. How and when this took
place we can only conjecture, but we have philological reasons
for believing that the two races had come into mutual contact
at a very early date, probably as early as the eleventh century
B.C. The early German name for the Rhine, for instance,
Rino-sy comes directly from the primitive Indo-European form
Relno-s and not from the Celtic Reno-s, which shows that the
Germans had reached that river at a time when the Celts who
lived along it still called it Reinos, not Renos. The Celts
afterwards changed the primitive ei into £, and from their
carrying the form rein x with them into Ireland, they had
probably done this as early as the ninth or tenth century B.C.,
for, as we have shown, the Celts who inhabited Ireland have
preserved the very oldest forms of the Celtic speech.
On the other hand the Celts always called that Germanic
tribe who accompanied the Cimbri by the name of Teutoni,
thus showing that they first came in contact with them at a
1 Rein =a primitive reni. It occurs in the Amra Colum-cilli, meaning
"of the sea."
WHO WERE THE CELTS? 11
date anterior to the phonetic law which introduced the so-
called explosive consonants into German, and which caused the
root Teutono (preserved intact by the Celts) to be turned into
Theudono. From this it follows that the German and Celtic
peoples were in touch with one another at a very remote period.
The long subordination of the German to the Celt has left
its marks deeply behind it, for his " language had remained un-
cultivated during ages of slavery, had been reduced to the
condition of a patois, and had forced the explosive consonants to
submit to modifications of sound, the analogues of which appear
in the Latin and Celtic languages during their decadence many
centuries after those modifications of sound had deformed the
language of the Germans."1
" In fine the Germanic has created for itself a place apart, amongst
the other Indo-European languages, though the excessive poverty
of its conjugation, which only knows three tenses — the present tense
and two past tenses — and which has lost in particular the imperfect
or secondary present, the future, and the sigmatic aorist, and which
has not had strength to regain those losses by the aid of new com-
posite tenses, with the exception of its dental preterite. The Celtic
has preserved the three tenses which the Germanic has lost." a
The Celtic language is in a manner allied to that of Italy,
as is shown by its grammar^ and out of all the circle of Indo-
European languages the Latin comes nearest to it, and it and
the Latin possess certain grammatical characteristics in common
which are absent from the others.3 To account for these we may
1 D'Arbois de Jubainville's " Premiers Habitants de 1'Europe," book iii.
chap. iii. § 15.
2 D'Arbois de Jubainville, ibid.
3 " Some of the oldest and deepest morphological changes in Aryan
speech are those which affect the Celto-Italic language. Such are the
formation of a new passive, a new future, and a new perfect. Hence it is
believed that the Celto-Italic languages may have separated from the rest
while the other Aryan languages remained united." Taylor's " Origin of
the Aryans," p. 257. Mr. Taylor is here alluding to the passive in r and the
future in bo, but my friend, M. Georges Dottin, in his laborious and
ample volume published last year, " Les desinences en R," has shown that
the r-passives, at least, are, in Italic and Celtic, independent creations.
12 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
assume what may be called an Italo-Celtic period, prior, pro-
bably, to the establishment of the Italian races in Italy, perhaps
some twelve hundred years before Christ.
On the other hand such mutual influence as Celtic and
German have exercised upon each other is restricted merely to
the vocabularies of the languages, for when these races came in
contact with each other the two tongues had been already
completely formed, and the grammar of the one could no longer
be affected by that of the other.
That there existed a kind of Celto-Germanic civilisation is
easily proved by the number of words common to each lan-
guage which are not found in the other Indo-European tongues,
or which if they occur in them, are found bearing a different
meaning. The two peoples, the dominant Celts and the
subject Germans, obeyed the same chiefs and fought in the
same armies, and naturally a certain number of words became
common to both. It is noticeable, however, that none of the
terms relating to either gods or priests or religious ceremonies
bear in either language the slightest resemblance to one another.
It was probably this difference of religion which preserved the
conquered people from being assimilated, and which was ulti-
mately the cause of the successful uprising of the servile tribes.
The words which are common to the Germanic and the
Celtic languages belong either to the art of government,
political institutions, and law, or else to the art of war. These
d'Arbois de Jubainville divides ioto two classes — those which can
be phonetically proved to be of Celtic origin, and those which,
though almost certainly of Celtic origin, yet cannot be proved
to be so to actual demonstration. Such important German
words1 as Reich and Ami are beyond all doubt Celtic loan-
1 These loan-words " can hardly be later than the time of the Gaulish
Empire founded by Ambicatus in the sixth century B.C. We gather from
them that at this or some earlier period the culture and political organisa-
tion of the Teutons was inferior to that of the Celts, and that the Teutons
must have been subjected to Celtic rule. It would seem from the linguistic
WHO WERE THE CELTS? 13
words, as are probably such familiar vocables as Bann, fret,
Bid, Geisel, leihen, Erbey Werth* all terms relating to law and
government, imposed on or borrowed by the conquered Germans.
From the Celts come also all such words concerning war and
fighting as are common to both nations, such as Held, Heer,
Sieg, Beute. From the Celts too come names of domiciles, as
Burg, Dorf Zaun, also of localities as Land, F/ur, Furty and the
English woody and of domestic aids as Pferd, Bell, and the Anglo-
Saxon Vir (a torque). They too seem to have been the first
in Northern Europe to have practised the art of medicine, for
from the Celtic 'comes the Gothic lekels — English leech."2
Certain other domestic words, such as Eisen, Loth, and Leder,
both races have in common.
Despite the long subjection of the Germans they never lost
their language, nor were they assimilated by the conquering
race, a fate from which they were probably preserved, as we have
said, by the complete difference of their sacred customs. There is
hardly one name in all the Teutonic theogony which even faintly
resembles a Celtic one.3 Their funeral rites were different,
evidence that the Teutons got from their Celtic and Lithuanian neighbours
their first knowledge of agriculture and metals, of many weapons and
articles of food and clothing, as well as the most elementary social,
religious, and political conceptions, the words for nation, people, king, and
magistrate being, for instance, loan-words from Celtic or Lithuanian." —
Taylor's " Origin of the Aryans," p. 234.
1 Also the Gothic word magus (" a slave"), old Irish mug, or mogh, liugan
(" to swear "), Irish luigh, dulgs (a debt), Irish dualgus, &c.
a Irish liaig. The Finns again borrowed this word from the Germans.
It is the root of the name Lee, in most Irish families of that surname,
indicating that their ancestors practised leech-craft.
3 Rhys indeed compares the great Teutonic sky-god Woden with the
Welsh Gwydion and Thor with the Celtic Taranucus or Thunder-God,
and is of opinion that a good deal of Teutonic mythology was drawn from
Celtic sources — a theory which, when we consider how much the
Germans are indebted to the Celts for their culture-terms, may well be
true with regard to later mythological conceptions and mythological saga.
However, it is now generally acknowledged that while all the nations of
Aryan origin possess a common inheritance of language, any inheritance of
a common mythology, if such exist at all, must be reduced to very small
H LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
the Germans burning, but the Celts burying their dead. Their
systems of priesthood were absolutely different, that of the
Celts being always an institution distinct from the kingship,
while that of the Germans was for centuries vested in the head
of the tribe or family. The priests of the Germans, even after
the functions of priesthood had been severed from those of
kingship, still exercised criminal jurisdiction, and even in the
army a soldier could not be punished without their sanction.
On the other hand the milder druids of the Celts appear
to have never taken part in the judgment of delinquents
against the State. Caesar makes no mention of their ever
acting as judges in criminal cases. The culprit guilty or
treason was not put to death by them but by the citizens —
ab civitate.*
It was about the year 300 B.C. that the German tribes, so
long incorporated with the Celts, at last rose against their
masters and broke their yoke from off their necks. They
succeeded in dislodging the Celts from the country which lies
between the Rhine and the North Sea, between the Elbe and
the basin of the Maine. It was in consequence of this blow
that the Celtic Belgae were obliged to withdraw from the
right bank of the Rhine to the left, and to occupy the country
between it, the Seine, and the Marne, whilst other tribes
settled themselves along the Rhine, and others again marched
upon Asia Minor and founded their famous colony of Galatia
in the extreme east of Europe, to whom, over three centuries
later, St. Paul addressed his epistle, and whose descendants were
found by St. Jerome in the fourth century still speaking
Celtic.^
proportions. The complete difference between the names of the Indian,
Hellenic, Italic, Teutonic, and Celtic gods is very striking.
1 " De Bello Gallico," book vii. chap. iv.
2 Which he speaks of as a mark of folly, in just the same tone as an
Anglicised Hibernian does of the Irish-speaking of the native Celts. His
words are worth quoting : — " Antiquae stultitiae usque hodie manent vesti-
gia. Unum est quod inferimus, et promissum in exordioreddimus, Galatas
WHO WERE THE CELTS? 15
It is no longer necessary to follow the fortunes of the Conti-
nental Celts, to trace the history of their Galatian colony, to
tell how they lost Spain, to recount the exploits of Marius and
Sylla, the wars of Caesar, the heroic struggle of Vercingetorix,
the division of Gaul by Octavius, the oppression of the Romans,
and finally the inroads of the barbaric hordes of Visigoths,
Burgundians, and Francs. It is sufficient to say that already
in the third century of our era Gaul had lost every trace of its
ancient Celtic organisation, and in its laws, habits, and civil
administration had become purely Roman. The upper classes
had, like the Irish upper classes of this and of the last century,
thrown aside every vestige of Gaulish nationality, and piqued
themselves upon the perfection with which they had Romanised
themselves, as the Irish upper classes do upon the thoroughness
with which they have become Anglicised. They threw aside
their Gaulish names to adopt others more consonant to Latin ears,
as the Irish are doing at this moment. Above all they prided
themselves upon speaking only the language of their conquerors,
and like so many of the Irish of to-day they derided their ancient
language as lingua rustica. It, however, banished from the
mouths of the nobles and officials, lived on in the villages and
rural parts of Gaul, as it has to this day done in Ireland, until
the sixth century, when it finally gave ground and retired into
the mountains and wastes of Armorica, where it coalesced
with the Welsh which the large colony of British brought in
with them when flying from the Saxon, and where it, in the
excepto sermone Graeco quo omnis Oriens loquitur propriam linguam
eamdem pene habere quam Treviros, nee referre si aliqua exinde corrum-
perint, cum et Aphri Phcenicum linguam nonnulla ex parte mutaverint, et
ipsa Latinitas et regionibus quotidie mutetur et tempore." His insinuation
that they spoke their own language badly is also thoroughly Anglo-
Hibernian, reminding one very much of Sir William Petty and others. See
Jerome's preface to his " Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians,"
book vii. p. 429. Migne's edition. In another passage he is more compli-
mentary, and calls them the Conquerors of the East and West — " Gallo-
graecia [i.e., Galatia] in qua consederunt Orientis Occidentisque victores."
See his " Epistle to Rusticus," book i. p. 935. Migne.
1 6 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
Cymraeg form of it, is still spoken by a couple of million
people.1
1 Although Celtic has so long disappeared out of France with the
exception of Armorica, it has left its traces deeply behind it upon the
French language. This is also true even of linguistic sounds. "Tous
les sons simples du francais se retrouvent dans le breton, et tous ceux
du breton a 1'exception d'un seul (le ch on le x) sont aussi dans notre
langue : I'M et \'e tres-ouvert, Ve muet si rare partout ailleurs, le j pur
inconnu a toute 1' Europe, les deux sons mouilles du n et du I (comme
dans les mots bataille et dignite) sont communs a la langue fran^aise
et aux idiomes celtiques," says Demogeot. Even in French customary
law there are " distinct and numerous traces " of old Gaulish habits and
legislation, as Laferriere has pointed out in his history of the civil law
of Rome and France. Nor is this to be in the least wondered at, when
we remember that nineteen-twentieths of the modern French blood is
computed to be that of the aboriginal races — Aquitanians, Celts, and Belgae ;
whilst out of the remaining twentieth " the descendants of the Teutonic in-
vaders— Franks, Burgundians, Goths, and Normans doubtless contributed
a more numerous element to the population than the Romans, who, though
fewer in number than any of the others, imposed their language on the
whole country " (see Taylor's " Origin of the Aryans," p. 204). The bulk
of the French nation is probably pre-Celtic. The modern Frenchman does
not at all resemble the Gallic type as described by the Greek and Roman
writers.
CHAPTER II
EARLIEST ALLUSIONS TO IRELAND FROM FOREIGN SOURCES
OF all the tribes of the Celts, and indeed of all their neigh-
bours in the west of Europe, the children of Milesius have been
at once blessed and cursed beyond their fellows, for on the
shores of their island alone did the Roman eagle check its
victorious flight, and they alone of the nations of western
Europe were neither moulded nor crushed into his own shape
by the conqueror of Gaul and Britain.
Undisturbed by the Romans, unconquered though shattered
by the Norsemen, unsubdued though sore-stricken by the
Normans, and still struggling with the Saxons, the Irish Gael
alone has preserved a record of his own past, and preserved it
in a literature of his own, for a length of time and with a con-
tinuity which outside of Greece has no parallel in Europe.
His own account of himself is that his ancestors, the Milesians,
or children of Miledh,1 came to Ireland from Spain about the
year 1000 B.C.,2 and dispossessed the Tuatha De Danann who
1 Milesius is the ordinary Latinised form of the Irish Miledh ; the real
name of Milesius was Golamh, but he was surnamed Miledh Easpain, or
the Champion of Spain. He himself never landed in Ireland.
3 1016 according to O'Flaherty, in the eighth century B.C. according to
Charles O' Conor of Belanagare, but as far back as 1700 B.C. according to
. the chronology of the " Four Masters." Nennius, the Briton who wrote in
B 17
1 8 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
had come from the north of Europe, as these had previously
dispossessed their kinsmen the Firbolg, who had arrived from
Greece.
Such a suggestion, however, despite the continuity and
volume of Irish tradition which has always supported it, appears
open to more than one rationalistic objection, the chiefest
being that the voyage from Spain to Ireland would be one of
some six hundred miles, hardly to be attempted by the early
Irish barks composed of wickerwork covered with hides, fragile
crafts which could hardly hope to live through the rough waters
of the Bay of Biscay and the Atlantic on a voyage from Spain,
or through the Mediterranean and the Atlantic on a voyage
from Greece.
On the other hand, if we assume that our ancestors passed
over from Gaul into Britain and thence into Ireland, we
shall find it fit in with many other facts. To begin with, the
voyage from Gaul to Britain is one of only some two and
twenty miles, and from Britain to Ireland, at its narrowest
point, is hardly twelve. The splendid physique, too, of the
Irish,1 which is now alas ! sadly degenerated through depression,
the time of Charlemagne, gives two different accounts of the landing of
the Irish, one evidently representing the British tradition, and the other
that of the Irish themselves, of which he says sic mihi peritissimi Scotornm
nunciaverunt. Both these accounts make the Irish come from Spain, the
first being that three sons of a certain Miles of Spain landed in Ireland
from Spain at the third attempt. According to what the Irish told him
they reached Ireland from Spain 1,002 years after flying from Egypt.
1 Even Giraldus Cambrensis, that most bigoted of anti-Irishmen, could
nevertheless write thus of the natives in the twelfth century. " In Ireland
man retains all his majesty. Nature alone has moulded the Irish, and as
if to show what she can do has given them countenances of exquisite
colour, and bodies of great beauty, symmetry, and strength." This testi-
mony agrees with what Caesar says of the Celts of Gaul, whose large per-
sons he compares with the short stature of the Romans, and admires their
mirifica corpora. Strabo says of a Celtic tribe, the Coritavi, " to show how
tall they are, I myself saw some of their young men at Rome, and they
were taller by six inches than any one else in the city." The Belgic Gauls
are uniformly described as tall, large-limbed, and fair, and Silius Italicus
speaks of the huge limbs and golden locks of the Boii who gave their name
ALLUSIONS FROM FOREIGN SOURCES 19
poverty, famine, and the rooting out of the best blood, but which
has struck during the course of history such numerous foreign
observers, seems certainly to connect the Irish by a family
likeness with the Gauls, as these have been described to us by
the Romans, and not with the Greeks or the swarthy, sun-
burnt Iberians. Tacitus also, writing less than a century after
Christ, tells us that the Irish in disposition, temper, and habits,
differ but little from the Britons, and we find in Britain, North
Gaul, and Germany, tribes of the same nomenclature as several
of those Irish tribes whose names are recorded by Ptolemy
about the year 150.*
On the one hand, then, we have the ancient universal Irish
traditions, backed up by all the authority of the bards, the
annalists and the shanachies, that the Milesians — who are the
ancestors of most of the present Irish — came to Ireland direct
from Spain ; and, on the other hand, we have these rationalistic
grounds for believing that Ireland was more probably peopled
from Gaul and Britain. The question cannot here be carried
further, except to remark that in an age ignorant of geography
the term Spain may have been used very loosely, and may rather
have implied some land oversea, rather than any particular
land.2
to Bavaria (Boio-varia) and to Bohemia (Boio-haims). They were probably
the ruling race in Gaul, but the type is now very rarely seen there, the
aristocratic Celts having been largely wiped out by war, as in Ireland, and
having when shorn of their power become amalgamated with the Ligurians
and other pre-Celtic peoples.
1 As the Brigantes, Menapii, and Cauci.
2 Buchanan the Scotchman (1506-81), having urged some of these
objections against the Irish tradition, is thus fairly answered by Keating,
writing in Irish, about half a century after Buchanan's death : " The first
of these reasons," says Keating (to prove that the Irish came from Gaul),
" he deduces from the fact that Gaul was formerly so populous that the
part of it called Gallia Lugdunensis would of itself furnish 300,000 fighting
men, and that it was therefore likely that it had sent forth some such
hordes to occupy Ireland,, as were the tribes of the Gauls. My answer to
that is that the author himself knew nothing of the specific time at which
the Sons of Miledh arrived in Ireland, and that he was consequently
perfectly ignorant as to whether France was populous or waste at that
20 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
If Ireland were not — thanks to her native annalists, her
autochtonous traditions and her bardic histories — to a great
extent independent of classical and foreign authors, she would
have fared badly indeed, so far as history goes, lying as she
does in so remote a corner of the world, and having been
untrodden by the foot of recording Greek or masterful
Roman. There are, however, some few allusions to the
island to be found, of which, perhaps, the earliest is the quota-
tion in Avienus, who writing about the year 380 mentions the
account of the voyage of Himilco, a Phoenician,1 to Ireland
about the year 510 B.C., who said in his account that Erin was
called "Sacra"2 by the ancients, that its people navigated the
vast sea in hide-covered barks, and that its land was populous
and fertile. In the Argonautics of the pseudo-Orpheus, which
may have been written about 500 B.C., the lernianS — that is
epoch. And even though the country were as populous as he states, when
the Sons of Miledh came to Ireland, it does not follow that we must
necessarily understand that it was the country whence they emigrated ; for
why should it be supposed to be more populous at that time than Spain,
the country they really did come from ? "
1 Aristotle, too, mentions the discovery by the Phoenicians, of an
island supposed to be Ireland, rich in forest and river and fruit, which,
however, this account would make out to have been uninhabited :
iv ry QdXaaoy ry f£o> 'HpaicXeiwv crijX&v <f>daiv VTTO Kap^j^oi/iwv vijaov
evpeQijvai tpr}\Li\v, l^ovaav vXrjv rt TravToficnrij KO.I TroTafjibvQ TrXwrouf, Kal
TOIQ XonroiQ jcapTroif Oavfiaairrjv, airk^ovaav Se. TrXeiovw rip,£.pu>v, etc.
Ireland was splendidly wooded until after the Cromwellian wars, and not
unfrequently we meet allusions in the old literature to the first clearances
in different districts, associated with the names of those who cleared them.
3 Sacra is apparently a translation of 'lepa = Eiriu, old form of Eire
now called Erin, which last is really an oblique case.
3 vrjffoiffiv 'Itpvlaiv, and vijaov 'lepviSa. The names by which Ireland
and its inhabitants were known to the writers of antiquity are very various,
as 'lovepma, 'lovipvoi, Juverna, Juberna, Iverna, Hibernia, Hibernici, Hiber-
nienses, Jouvernia, Ouepi/icr, 'lovpvia, and even Vernia and Bepv/a. St.
Patrick in his confessions calls the land Hyberione and speaks of Hibernae
Gentes and " filii Scotorum." There can be little doubt that Aristotle's
'Ispvjj, the vrjffov 'Itpvlda of the Argonautics and Diodorus' "Ipif represent
the same country. Here are Keating's remarks on it: "An t-aonmhadh
hainm deag Juvernia do reir Ptolomeus, no Juverna do reir Sholinuis, no
lerna do reir Claudianus, no Vernia do reir Eustatius ; measaim nach
ALLUSIONS FROM FOREIGN SOURCES 21
apparently the Irish — Isle is mentioned. Aristotle knew
about it too. lerne, he says, is a very large island beyond the
Celts. Strabo, writing soon after the birth of Christ, describes
its position and shape, also calling it lerne, but according to
his account — which he acknowledges, however, that he does
not make on good authority — it is barely habitable and its
people are the most utter savages and cannibals.1 Hibernia,
says Julius Caesar, is esteemed half the size of Britain and is as
distant from it as Gaul is. Diodorus, some fifty years before
Christ, calls it Iris, and says it was occupied by Britons.2
Pomponius Mela, in the first century of our era, calls Ireland
Iverna, and says that "so great was the luxuriance of grass
there as to cause the cattle to burst " ! Tacitus a little later,
about the year 82, telling us how Agricola crossed the Clyde
and posted troops in that part of the country which looked
toward Ireland, says that Hibernia " in soil and climate, in the
disposition, temper, and habits of its people, differed but little
from Britain, and that its approaches and harbours were better
known through traffic and merchants." 3
bhfuil do cheill san deifir ata idir na h-ughdaraibh sin do leith an fhocail-se
Hibernia, acht nar thuigeadar cread 6 ttainig an focal fein 7 da reir sin go
ttug gach aon fo leith amus uaidh fein air, agus is de sin thainig an
mhalairt ud ar an bhfocal." (See Haliday's " Keating," p. 119.)
1 'Igpj/?/ TTfjoi ?IQ ow^v t%o^6v Xlyeiv <ra0£f, except that the inhabitants
are avQpo>iro<f>ayoi and 7ro\u0ayoi ! TOVQ re Trarkpaq TfXtvT^aavraQ KctTea-
OIEIV tv KaXy Tidepevoi. He adds, however, TCLVTO. d'ovra) Xeyofiev wf OVK
t-XovTEQ dZioTricrrovQ /taprupaf (Book IV., ch. v.). In another passage he
shows how utterly misinformed he must have been by saying that 'lepvrj
was d9\iui£ Se Sia ^t»x°C oiKovfiivijv werre TO. iireKeiva vopi&iv doiicrjTa.
(II. 5). Elsewhere he calls the inhabitants dyptwrepoi r&v Bperavwj/.
2 T(JJV BperraixSv, TOVQ KCLTOIKOVVTCIQ TJ]V 6vop,a^onsvr}v"Ipiv.
3 " Solum ccelumque et ingenia cultusque hominum haud multum a
Britannia different ; in melius aditus portusque per commercia et nego-
ciatores cogniti." This employment of in before melius is curious, and the
passage, which Diefenbach in his Celtica malignly calls the " Lieblings-
stelle der irischen Schriftsteller," is not universally accepted as meaning
that the harbours of Ireland were better known than those of Great
Britain ; but when we consider the antiquarian evidence for ancient Irish
civilisation, and that in artistic treatment, and fineness of manufacture
22 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
Ptolemy, writing about the year 150, unconsciously bears
out to some extent what Tacitus had said of Ireland's
harbours being better known than those of Britain, for he has
left behind him a more accurate account of Ireland than of
Britain, giving in all over fifty Irish names, about nine of
which have been identified, and mentioning the names of two
coast towns, seven inland towns, and seventeen tribes, some of
which, as we have said, nearly resemble the names of tribes in
Britain and North Gaul. Solinus, about A.D. 238, is the first
to tell us that Hibernia has no snakes — observe this curious
pre-Patrician evidence which robs our national saint of one of
his laurels — saying, like Pomponius Mela, that it has luxurious
pastures, and adding the curious intelligence that, " warlike
beyond the rest of her sex, the Hibernian mother places the
first morsel of food in her child's mouth with the point of the
sword." Eumenius mentions the Hibernians about the year
306 in his panegyric on Constantine, saying that until now
the Britons had been accustomed to fight only Pictish and
Hibernian enemies. In 378 Ammianus Marcellinus mentions
the Irish under the name of Scots, saying that the Scotti and
Attacotti1 commit dreadful depredations in Britain, and
Irish bronzes are fully equal to those of Great Britain, and her gold objects
infinitely more numerous and every way superior, there seems no reason
to doubt that the text of Tacitus must be translated as above, and not sub-
jected to such forced interpretations as that the harbours and approaches
of Ireland were better known than the land itself!
1 " Picti Saxonesque et Scotti et Attacotti Britannos aerumnis vexavere
continuis." These Attacotti appear to have been an Irish tribe. There is a
great deal of controversy as to who they were. St. Jerome twice mentions
them in connection with the Scots (i.e., the Irish) : Scotorum ct Atticotonim
ritu, they have their wives and children in common, as Plato recommends
in his Republic ! (Migne's edition, Book I., p. 735.) He says that he himself
saw some of them when he was young, " Ipse adolescens in Gallia viderim
Attacottos, Scotorum (one would expect Attacotorum) natio uxores proprias
non habet. The name strongly resembles Cassar's Aduatuci and Diodorus's
ArovariKoi and certainly appears to be same as the Gaelic Aitheach-Tuatha,
so well known in Irish history, a name which O'Curry translates by
" rent-paying tribes," probably of non-Milesian origin. These rose in the
first century against their Milesian masters and massacred them. If as
ALLUSIONS FROM FOREIGN SOURCES 23
Claudian a few years later speaks rather hyperbolically of the
Irish invasion of Britain ; "the Scot (/.*., the Irishman)," he
says, " moved all lerne against us, and the Ocean foamed under
his hostile oars — a Roman legion curbs the fierce Scot, through
Stilicho's care I feared not the darts of the Scots — Icy Erin
wails over the heaps of her Scots."1 The Irish expeditions
against both Gaul and Britain became more frequent towards
the end of the fourth century, and at last the unfortunate
Britons, driven to despair, and having in vain appealed to the
now disorganised Romans to aid them, sooner than stand the
fury of the Irish and Picts threw themselves into the arms of
the Saxons.2
It is towards the middle or close of the fourth century that
we come into much closer historical contact with the Irish,
and indeed we know with some certainty a good deal about
their internal history, manners, laws, language, and institutions
from that- time to the present. Of course if we can trust
Irish sources we know a great deal about them for even seven
or eight hundred years before this. The early Irish annalist,
Tighearnach,3 who died in 1088, and who had of course the
Thierry thinks the east and centre of Gaul were Gaelic speaking, they too
may have had their Aitheach-Tuatha, which may have been a general name
for certain non-Celtic tribes reduced by the Celts. According to the
Itinerarium of Ricardus Corinensis quoted by Diefenbach, Book III., there
were Attacotti along the banks of the Clyde : " Clottce ripas accolebant Atta-
cotti, gens toil aliquando Britannice formidanda"
1 " Scotorum cumulos flevit glacialis lerne" ("glacialis," of course, only
when looked at from a southern point of view. Strabo, as we have seen,
said the island was scarcely habitable from cold).
" — Totam quum Scotus lernen
Movit et infesto spumavit remige Tethys. "
It is probably mere hyperbole of Claudian to say that the Roman chased
the Irish out to sea,
" — nee falso nomine Pictos
Edomuit, Scotumque vago mucrone secutus
Fregit Hyperboreas velis audacibus undas."
3 These appear in Britain in the middle of the fifth century, in 449
according to the Saxon Chronicle, which is probably substantially correct.
3 Pronounced " Teear-nach."
24 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
records of the earliest Irish writers — so far as they had escaped
extinction by the Danes — before his eyes when he wrote, and
who quotes frequently and judiciously from Joseph us, St. Jerome,
Bede, and other authors, was of opinion, after weighing evidence
and comparing Irish with foreign writers, that the monumenta
Scotorum, or records of the Irish prior to Cimbaeth (/.*., about
300 B.C.) were uncertain. This means that from that time
forwards he at least considered that the substance of Irish
history as handed down to us might, to say the least of it, be
more or less relied upon. Cimbaeth was the founder of
Emania, the capital of Ulster, the home of the Red Branch
Knights, which flourished for 600 years and which figures so
conspicuously in the saga-cycle of Cuchulain.
What then — for we pass over for the present the colonies of
Partholan, the Tuatha De Danann, and the Nemedians,
leaving them to be dealt with among the myths — have our
native bards and annalists to say of these six or seven centuries ?
As several of the best and greatest of Irish sagas deal with
events within this period, we can — if bardic accounts, probably
first committed to writing about the sixth or seventh century
may at all be trusted — to some extent recall its leading features,
or reconstruct them.
CHAPTER III
EARLY HISTORY DRAWN FROM NATIVE SOURCES
THE allusions to Ireland and the Irish from the third century
before to the fourth century after Christ, are, as we have seen,
both few and scanty, and throw little or no light upon the
internal affairs or history of the island ; for these we must go
to native sources.
At the period when Emania was founded, that is, at the
period when according to the learned native annalist Tighear-
nach, the records of the early Irish cease to be " uncertain,"
the throne of Ireland was occupied by a High-king called
Ugony x the Great, and a certain body of saga, much of which
is now lost, collected itself around his personality, and attached
itself to his two sons, Cobhthach Caol-mBreagh and Leary2
Lore, and around Leary Lore's grandson, Lowry 3 the mariner.
It was this Ugony who attempted to substitute a new terri-
torial division of Ireland in place of the five provinces into
which it had been divided by the early Milesians. He exacted
an oath by all the elements — the usual Pagan oath — from the
men of Ireland that they would never oppose his children or
his race, and then he divided the island into twenty-five parts,
1 In Irish, lugoine. a In Irish, Laoghaire.
3 In Irish, Labhraidh Loingseach.
25
26 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
giving one to each of his children. He succeeded in this
manner in destroying the ancient division of Ireland into
provinces and in perpetuating his own, for several generations,
when Eochaidh F£idhleach x once more reverted to the ancient
system of the five provinces — Ulster, Connacht, Leinster, and
the two Munsters. This Eochaidh F&dhleach came to the
throne about 140 years before Christ, according to the "Four
Masters,"2 and it was his daughter who is the celebrated heroine
Meve,3 queen of Connacht, who reigned at Rathcroghan in
Connacht, and who undertook the great Tain Bo or Cattle
Raid into Ulster, that has been celebrated for nigh on 2,000
years in poem and annal among the children of the Gael ; and
her name introduces us to Conor 4 mac Nessa, king of Ulster,
to the palace of Emania, to the Red Branch knights, to the
tragedy of D£irdre and all the vivid associations of the Cuchu-
lain cycle.
It was thirty-three years before Christ, according to the
"Four Masters," that Conaire the Great, High-king of all
Ireland, was slain, and he is the central figure of the famous
and very ancient saga of the Bruidhean Da Derga.5
And now we come to the birth of Christ, which is thus
recorded by the " Four Masters" : " The first year of the age of
Christ and the eighth of the reign of Crimhthan Niadhnair." 6
Crimhthan was no doubt one of the marauding Scots who
plundered Britain, for it is recorded of him that " it was this
Crimhthan who went on the famous expedition beyond the sea
from which he brought home several extraordinary and costly
1 Pronounced " Yo-hy Faylach."
2 Less than 100 years before, according to Keating.
3 In Irish, Meadhbh, pronounced Meve or Maev. In Connacht it is
often strangely pronounced " MQW," rhyming with " cow." This name
dropped out of use about 150 years ago, being Anglicised into Maud.
4 In Irish, Concobar, or Conchubhair, a name of which the English
have made Conor, almost in accordance with the pronunciation.
s Pronounced " Breean Da Darga," i.e., the Mansion Da Derga.
6 Pronounced " Crivhan " or " Criffan Neeanar." Keating assigns the birth
of Christ to the twelfth year of his reign.
EARLY HISTORY FROM NATIVE SOURCES 27
treasures, among which were a gilt chariot and a golden chess-
board, inlaid with three hundred transparent gems, a tunic of
various colours and embroidered with gold, a shield embossed
with pure silver," and many other valuables. Curiously
enough O'Clery's Book of Invasions contains a poem of
seventy-two lines ascribed to this king himself, in which he
describes these articles. He was fabled to have been accom-
panied on this expedition by his " bain-leannan " or fairy
sweetheart, one of an interesting race of beings of whom
frequent mention is made in Irish legend and saga.
The next event of consequence after the birth of Christ
is the celebrated revolt led by Cairbre Cinn-cait, of the
Athach-Tuatha,1 or unfree clans of Ireland, in other words the
serfs or plebeians, against the free clans or nobility, whom they
all but exterminated, three unborn children of noble line alone
escaping.2
The people of Ireland were plagued — as though by heaven
— with bad seasons and lack of fruit during the usurper
Cairbre"'s reign. As the " Four Masters " graphically put it,
"evil was the state of Ireland during his reign, fruitless her
corn, for there used to be but one grain on the stalk ; fishless
1 The Athach (otherwise Aitheach) Tuatha Dr. O' Conor translates
" giant-race," but it has probably no connection with the word \f\athach,
"a giant." O' Curry and most authorities translate it "plebeian," or "rent-
paying," and Keating expressly equates it with daor-chlanna, or "unfree
clans." These were probably largely if not entirely composed of Firbolgs
and other pre-Milesians or pre-Celtic tribes. See p. 22, note i.
2 These were Fearadach, from whom sprang all the race of Conn of
the Hundred Battles, i.e., most of the royal houses in Ulster and Connacht,
Tibride Tireach, from whom the Dal Araide, the true Ulster princes,
Magennises, etc., spring, and Corb Olum, from whom the kings of the
Eoghanachts, that is, the royal families of Munster, come. O'Mahony,
however, points out that this massacre could not have been anything like
as universal as is here stated, for the ancestors of the Leinster royal
families, of the Dal Fiatach of Ulster, the race of Conaire, that of the
Ernaans of Munster, and several tribes throughout Ireland of the races of
the Irians, Conall Cearnach, and Feargus Mac Roigh, were not involved
in it.
28 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
her rivers ; milkless her cattle ; unplenty her fruit, for there
used to be but one acorn on the oak." The belief that bad
seasons were sent as a punishment of bad rulers was a very
ancient and universal one in Ireland, and continued until very
lately. The ode which the ollav or head-bard is said to have
chanted in the ears of each newly-inaugurated prince, took
care to recall it to his mind, and may be thus translated : —
" Seven witnesses there be
Of the broken faith of kings.
First — to trample on the free,
Next — to sully sacred things,
Next — to strain the law divine,
(This defeat in battle brings).
Famine, slaughter, milkless kine,
And disease on flying wings.
These the seven-fold vivid lights
That light the perjury of kings ! " x
According to the Book of Conquests the people of
Ireland, plagued by famine and bad seasons, brought in, on the
death of Cairbre, the old reigning families again, making
Fearadach king, and the " Athach-Tuatha swore by the heaven
and earth, sun, moon, and all the elements, that they would
be obedient to them and their descendants, as long as the sea
1 " Mos erat ut omni, qui in dignitatem elevatus fuerit, philosopho-poeta
Oden caneret," etc. (See p. 10 of the " Institutio Principis " in the Trans-
actions of the Gaelic Society, 1808, for O'Flanagan's Latin.) He does not
give the original, nor have I ever met it. Consonant with this is a verse
from Tadhg Mac Daire's noble ode to Donogh O'Brien —
" Teirce, daoirse, dith ana,
Plagha, cogtha, conghala,
Diombuaidh catha, gairbh-shion, gold,
Tre ain-bhfir flatha fasoid."
I.e ., " Dearth, servitude, want of provisions, plagues, wars, conflicts, defeat
in battle, rough weather, rapine, through the falsity of a prince they
arise." I find a curious extension of this idea in a passage in the " Annals
of Loch Ce " under the year 1568, which is recorded as " a cold stormy
year of scarcity, and this is little wonder, for it was in it Mac Diarmada
(Dermot) died " !
EARLY HISTORY FROM NATIVE SOURCES 29
should surround Ireland." The land recovered its tranquillity
with the reign of Fearadach. " Good was Ireland during llis
time. The seasons were right tranquil ; the earth brought
forth its fruit. Fishful its river mouths ; milkful the kine ;
heavy-headed the woods."
There was a second uprising of the Athach-Tuatha later
on,1 when they massacred their masters on Moy Bolg. The
lawful heir to the throne was yet unborn at the time of this
massacre and so escaped. This was the celebrated Tuathal
[Too-a-hal, now Toole], who ultimately succeeded to the throne
and became one of the most famous of all the pre-Patrician
kings. It was he who first established or cut out the province
of Meath. The name Meath had always existed as the ap-
pellation of a small district near which the provinces of Ulster,
Connacht, Leinster, and the two Munsters joined. Tuathal cut
off from each of the four provinces the angles adjoining it, and
out of these he constituted a new province 2 to be thenceforth the
1 There is a rather suspicious parallelism between these two risings,
which would make it appear as though part at least of the story had been
reduplicated. First Cairbre Cinn-Cait, and the Athach-Tuatha, in the year
10, slay the nobles of Ireland, but Fearadach escapes in his mother's womb.
His mother was daughter of the King of Alba. After five years of famine
Cairbre dies and Fearadach comes back and reigns. Again, in the year
56, Fiachaidh, the legitimate king, is slain by the provincial kings at the
instigation of the Athach-Tuatha, in the slaughter of Moy Bolg. His
unborn son also escapes in the womb of his mother. This mother is also
daughter of the King of Alba. Elim the usurper reigns, but God again
takes vengeance, and during the time that Elim was in the sovereignty
Ireland was " without corn, without milk, without fruit, without fish," etc.
Again, on the death of Elim the legitimate son comes to the throne, and
the seasons right themselves . Keating's account agrees with this except
that he misplaces Cairbre's reign. There probably were two uprisings of
the servile tribes against their Celtic masters, but some of the events
connected with the one may have been reduplicated by the annalists.
O'Donovan, in his fine edition of the " Four Masters," does not notice this
parallelism.
2 This would appear to have left six provinces in Ireland, but the dis-
tinction between the two Munsters became obsolete in time, though about
a century and a half later we find Cormac levying war on Munster and
demanding a double tribute from it as it was a double province ! So late
30 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
special estate, demesne, and inheritance of the High-kings of
Ireland. He built, or rebuilt, four palaces in the four quarters
of the district he had thus annexed, all of them celebrated in
after times — of which more later on. It was he also who,
under evil auspices and in an evil hour, extorted from Leinster
the first Borumha,1 or Boru tribute, — nomen infaustum — a
step which contributed so powerfully to mould upon lines
of division and misery the history of our unhappy country
from that day until the present, by estranging the province of
Leinster, throwing it into the arms of foreigners, and causing
it to put itself into opposition to the rest of Ireland. This
unhappy tribute, of which we shall hear more later on, was
imposed during the reigns of forty kings.
Thirteen years after the death of Tuathal, Cathaoir [Cau-
heer], celebrated for his Will or Testament,2 reigned ; he was
of pure Leinster blood, and the men of that province have
always felicitated themselves upon having given at least this
as the fourteenth century O'Dugan, in his poem on the kings of the line of
Eber, refers to the two provinces of Munster.
" Da thir is aille i n-Eirinn
Da chuige an Chlair leibhinn,
Tir fhoid-sheang aird-mhin na ngleann
Coigeadh i d'Aird-righ Eireann " —
i.e.y the two most beauteous lands in Ireland, the two provinces of the
delightful plain, the slender-sodded, high-smooth land of the valleys, a
province is she for the High-king of Ireland.
1 There is a town in Clare called Borumha [gen. "Boirbhe," according to
O'Brien] from which it is said Brian Boru derived his name. But the usual
belief is that he derived it from having imposed the boroimhe tribute again
on Leinster. Borumha is pronounced Bo-roo-a, hence the popular Boru[a]
Boroimhe is pronounced Bo-ruvS.. It is also said that the town of Borumha
in Clare got its name from having the Boroimhe tribute driven into it.
The spelling Boroimhe [ = Boruva] instead of Borumha [Boru-a] has been
a great crux to English speakers, and I noticed the following skit, in a little
Trinity College paper, the other day —
" Says the warrior Brian Boroimhe,
I'm blest if I know what to doimhe —
My favourite duck
In the chimney is stuck,
And the smoke will not go up the floimhe ! "
2 See " The Book of Rights," p. 172.
EARLY HISTORY FROM NATIVE SOURCES 31
one great king to Ireland. It is from him that the great
Leinster families — the O'Tooles, O'Byrnes, Mac Morroughs
or Murphys, O'Conor Falys, O'Gormans, and others — descend.
He was slain, A.D. 123, by Conn of the Hundred Battles.1
There are few kings during the three hundred years pre-
ceding and following the birth of Christ more famous than this
Conn, and there is a very large body of saga collected round
him and his rival Eoghan [Owen], the king of Munster who
succeeded in wresting half the sovereignty from him. As the
result of their conflicts that part of Ireland which lies north
of the Escir Riada,2 or, roughly speaking, that lies north of a
line drawn from Dublin to Gal way, has from that day to this
been known as Conn's Half, and that south of the same line as
Owen's Half. Owen was at last slain by him of the hundred
battles at the fight of Moy Leana.
Owen, as we have seen, was never King of Ireland, but he
left behind him a famous son, Oilioll 3 Olum, who was married
to Sadhbh,4 the daughter of his rival and vanquisher, Conn of
the Hundred Battles, and it is to this stem that nearly all the
ruling families of Munster trace themselves. From his eldest
1 It was O'Beirne Crowe, I think, who first translated this name by "Conn
the Hundred- Fighter," " egal-a-cent-guerriers," as Jubainville has it, a trans-
lation which, since him, every one seems to have adopted . This translation
makes the Irish adjective ceadcathach exactly equivalent to the Greek
6Karoira/ia%oe, but it is certainly not correct, for Keating says distinctly
that Conn was called ceadcathach, or of the hundred battles, "from the
hundreds of battles which he fought against the pentarchs or provincial
kings of Ireland," quoting a verse from a bard by way of illustration.
2 Pronounced " Eskkir Reeada."
3 Pronounced "Ell-yull."
4 Pronounced " Sive,"but asMeadhbh is curiously pronounced like "Mow "
in Connacht, so is SadJibh pronounced " sow," rhyming to " cow." I heard
a Galway woman in America, the mother of Miss Conway, of the Boston
Pilot quote these lines, which she said she had often heard in her youth —
"Sow, Mow [i.e., Sive and Meve], Sorcha, Sighle,
Anmneacha cat agus madah na tire."
7.0., " Sive, Meve, Sorcha and Sheela are the names of all the cats and
dogs in the country," and hence by implication unsuited for human beings.
This was part of the process of Anglicisation.
32 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
son, Owen Mor, come the Mac Carthys, O'Sullivans, O'Keefes,
O'Callaghans, etc. ; from his second son come the Mac Namaras
and Clancys ; and from his third son, Cian,1 come the so-called
tribes of the Cianachts, the O'CarrolIs, O'Meaghers, O'Haras,
O'Garas, Caseys, the southern O'Conors, and others. There is a
considerable body of romance gathered around this Oilioll and his
sons and wife, chiefly connected with the kingship of Munster.
Conn's son, Art the Lonely — so-called because he survived
after the slaughter of his brothers — was slain by Mac Con,
Sive's son by her first husband, and the slayer ruled in his place,
being the third king of the line of the Ithians, of whom we
shall read later on, who came to the throne.
He, however, was himself killed at the instigation of Cormac,
son of Art, or Cormac mac Art, as he is usually designated.
This Cormac is a central figure of the large cycle of stories
connected with Finn and the Fenians. He was at last slain
in the battle of Moy Mochruime. His advice to a prince,
addressed to his son Cairbre of the Liffey, will be noticed later
on, andj so far as it may be genuine, bears witness to his
reputed wisdom, " as do the many other praiseworthy institutes
named from him that are still to be found among the books
of the Brehon Laws." 2 This Cormac it was who built the
first mill in Ireland, and who made a banqueting-place of the
great hall of Mi-Cuarta,3 at Tara, which was one hundred
yards long, forty-five feet high, one hundred feet broad, and
which was entered by fourteen doors. The site is still to be
seen, but no vestige of the building, which, like all early Irish
structures, was of wood.
Cairbre of the Liffey succeeded his father Cormac, and it
was he who fought the battle of Gabhra (Gowra) with the
Fenians, in which he himself was slain, but in which he broke,
and for ever, the power of that unruly body of warriors.
About the year 331 the great Ulster city and palace of
1 Pronounced " Keean." 2 Keating.
3 I.e., the hall of "the circulation of mead."
EARLY HISTORY FROM NATIVE SOURCES 33
Emania, which had been the home of Conor and the Red
Branch knights, and the capital of Ulster for six hundred
years, was taken and burnt to the ground by the Three Collas,
who thus become the ancestors of a number of the tribes
of modern Ulster. From one of them descend the
Mac Mahons, the ruling family of Monaghan ; the Maguires,
barons of Fermanagh ; and the O'Hanlons, chiefs of Orior ;
while another was the ancestor of the Mac Donalds of Antrim
and the Isles, of the Mac Dugalds, and the Mac Rories. The old
nobility of Ulster, whose capital had been Emania, were thrust
aside into the north-east corner of Ulster, whence most of
them were expelled by the planters of James I.
We now come to Eochaidh [Yohee] Muigh-mheadhoin
[Mwee-va-on] who was father of the celebrated Niall of the
Nine Hostages. From one of his sons, Brian, come the Ui
[Ee] Briain, that is, the collection of families composed of
the seed of Brian — the O'Conors, kings of Connacht ; the
Mac Dermots, princes of Moylurg, afterwards of Coolavin ;
the O'Rorkes, princes of Breffny; the O'Reillys, O'Flaherties,
and Mac Donaghs. From another son of his, Fiachrach, come
the Ui Fiachrach, who were for ages the rivals of the Ui
Briain in contesting the sovereignty of Connacht — the
O'Shaughnesies were one of the principal families representing
this sept.1
Eochaidh Muigh-mheadhoin was succeeded in 3662 by
Crimhthan [Crivhan], who was one of those militant Scots at
whose hands the unhappy Britons suffered so sorely. He
u gained victories," say the annals, " and extended his sway
over Alba, Britain, and Gaul," which probably means that he
raided all three, and possibly made settlements in South-west
Britain. He was poisoned by his sister in the hope that the
sovereignty would fall to her favourite son Brian. In this,
however, she was disappointed, and it is a noticeable fact in
1 Also the O'Dowdas of Mayo, the O'Heynes, O'Clearys, and Kilkellies.
2 In 360 according to Keating.
c
34 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
Irish history that none of the Ui Briain, or great Connacht
families, ever sat upon the throne of Ireland, with the excep-
tion of Turlough O'Conor, third last king of Ireland, ancestor
of the present O'Conor Don, and Roderick O'Conor, the
last of all the High-kings of the island.
Brian being set aside, Niall of the Nine Hostages ascended
the throne in 379. It was he who first assisted the Dal Riada
clans to gain supremacy over the Picts of Scotland. These
Dal Riada were descended from a grandson, on the mother's
side, of Conn of the Hundred Battles. There were two septs
of these Dal Riada, one settled in Ulster and the other in Alba
[Scotland]. It was from the conquests x achieved by the Scots
{I.e. Milesians] of Ireland that Alba was called Lesser Scotia.
In course of ages the inconvenient distinction of the countries
into Lesser and Greater Scotia died away, but the name
Scotia, or Scotland, without any qualifying adjective, clung to
the lesser country to the frightful confusion of historians,
while the greater remained known to foreigners as Erin, or
Hibernia.2 This Niall was surnamed " of the Nine Hostages,"
from his having extorted hostages from nine minor kings. He
mercilessly plundered Britain and Gaul. The Picts and Irish
1 One branch of the Dal Riada settled in Scotland in the third century,
and their kinsfolk from Ulster kept constantly crossing over and assisting
them in their struggles with the Picts. They were recruited also by some
other minor emigrations of Irish Picts and Milesians. Their complete
supremacy over the Picts was not obtained till the beginning of the sixth
century. It was about the year 502 that Fergus the Great, leading a fresh
and powerful army of the Dal Riada into Scotland, first assumed for himself
Royal authority which his descendants retained for 783 years, down to the
reign of Malcolm IV., slain in 1285. It was not, however, till about the
year 844 that the Picts, who were almost certainly a non-Aryan race, were
finally subdued by King Keneth Mac Alpin, who completely Gaelicised them.
2 The name of Scotia was used for Ireland as late as the fifteenth cen-
tury upon the Continent, in one or two instances at least, and "kommt
noch am 15 Jahrhundert in einer Unkunde des Kaisers Sigismund vor, und
der Name Schottenkloster setzt das Andenken an diese ursprungliche
Bezeichnung Irlands noch in mehreren Stadten Deutschlands (Regens-
burg, Wurtzburg, Coin, £c.), Belgien, Frankreich und der Schweiz fort "
(Rodenberg's " Insel der Heiligen." Berlin, 1860, vol. i. p. 321).
EARLY HISTORY FROM NATIVE SOURCES 35
Gaels combined had at one time penetrated as far as London and
Kent, when Theodosius drove them back.1 It was probably
against Niall that Stilicho gained those successes so magnilo-
quently eulogised by Claudian, " when the Scot moved all
lerne against us and the sea foamed under his hostile
oars." Niall had eight sons, from whom the famous Ui [Ee]
Neill are all descended. One branch of these, the branch
descended from his son Owen, took the name of O'Neill in the
eleventh century, not from him of the Nine Hostages, but from
King Niall of the Black Knee, a less remote ancestor, of whom
more later on. This was the great family of the Tyrone
O'Neills. So solidly did the posterity of Niall establish itself,
and upon so firm a basis was his power perpetuated, that
almost all the following kings of Ireland were descended from
him, besides multitudes of illustrious families, " nearly three
hundred of his descendants, eminent for their learning and the
sanctity of their lives," says O'Flaherty, " have been enrolled
in the catalogue of the saints." 2 He it was who, while plun-
dering in Britain or Armorica, led back amongst other
captives the youth, then sixteen years old, who was destined,
under the title of the Holy Patrick, to revolutionise Ireland.
St. Patrick's own " Confession " and his Epistle to Coroticus
1 Bede describes the bitter complaints of the unfortunate Britons.
" Repellunt," they said, " Barbari ad mare, repellit mare ad Barbaros.
Inter hasc duo genera funerum oriuntur, aut jugulamur aut mergimur."
2 The Northern and Southern Ui Neill [i.e., the septs descended from Niall]
are so inextricably connected with all Irish history that it may be as well to
state here that four of his sons settled in Meath, and that their descendants
are called the Southern Ui Neill. The so-called Four Tribes of Tara— O'Hart,
O'Regan, O'Kelly of Bregia, and O'Conolly — with many more subsepts,
belong to them. The other four sons are the ancestors of the Northern Ui
Neill of Ulster, the O'Neills, O'Donnells, and their numerous co-relatives.
The Ui Neill remained to the last the ablest and most powerful clan in Ireland,
only rivalled — if rivalled at all — by the O'Briens of Thomond, and later by
the Geraldines, who were of Italian lineage according to most authori-
ties. " Giraldini qui amplissimos et potentissimos habeunt ditiones in Austro
et Oriente, proxime quidem ex Britannia hue venerunt, origine vero sunt
I tali nempe vetustissimi et nobilissimi Florentini sive Amerini " (Peter
Lombard, " De Regno Hibernias." Louvain, 1632, p. 4).
36 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
have come down to us — the former preserved in the Book of
Armagh, a manuscript copied by a scribe named Ferdomnach
in 807 (or 812 according to a truer chronology), apparently
from St. Patrick's own copy, for at the end of the Confession
the scribe adds this note : " Thus far the volume which Patrick
wrote with his own hand." x In this ancient manuscript (itself
only a copy of older ones so damaged as to be almost illegible 2
to the scribe who copied them in 807, a little more than three
hundred years after St. Patrick's death), we find nearly a dozen
mentions of Niall of the Nine Hostages, of his son Laeghaire
[Leary], and several more who lived before St. Patrick's arrival,
and so find ourselves for the first time upon tolerably solid
historical ground, which from this out never deserts us. St.
Columcille, the evangeliser of the Picts and the founder of
lona, was the great-great-grandson of this Niall, and the great-
grandson of Conall Gulban, so celebrated even to this day in
Irish romance and history.3
Ascertainable authenticated Irish history, then, begins with
Niall and with Patrick, but in this chapter we have gone
1 " Hucusque volumen quod Patricius manu conscripsit sua. Septima
decima martii die translatus est Patricius ad ccelos."
2 See Father Hogan's preface to his admirable edition of St. Patrick's
life from the Book of Armagh edited by him for the Bolandists, where
he says of the MS. that though beautifully coloured it is " tamen difficilis
lectu, turn quod quaedam voces aut etiam paginae plus minus injuria tem-
porum deletae sunt, turn quod ipsum exemplar unde exscriptus est jam
videtur talem injuriam passum : quod indicant rursus notae subinde ad
marginem appositae, praesertim vero signum h (vel in i.e. incerium ?) et Z
(£»/rei) quae dubitationem circa aliquot vocum scriptionem prodere
videntur." The words incertus liber hie, "the book is not clear here,"
occur twice, and the zeta of inquiry eight times. See Dr. Reeves' paper,
" Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy." August, 1891.
3 Heaven itself was believed to have reverenced this magnificent
genealogy, for in his life, in the Book of Lecan, we read how " each man
of the bishops used to grind a quern in turn, howbeit an angel from
heaven used to grind on behalf of Columcille. This was the honour which
the Lord used to render him because of the eminent nobleness of his
race " ! See Stokes' " Lives of the Saints, from the Book of Lecan,"
P- 173.
EARLY HISTORY FROM NATIVE SOURCES 37
behind it to see what may be learned from native sources —
rather traditional than historical — of Irish life and history, from
the founding of Emania three hundred years before Christ
down to the coming of St. Patrick. But for all the things
which we have recounted we have no independent external
testimony, nor have we now any manuscripts remaining of
which we could say, u We have here documentary evidence
fifteen or twenty centuries old attesting the truth of these
things." No ; we are entirely dependent for all that pre-
Patrician history upon native evidence alone, and that evidence
has come down to us chiefly but not entirely in manuscripts
copied in the twelfth and in later centuries.
CHAPTER IV
HOW FAR CAN NATIVE SOURCES BE RELIED ON ?
IT must next be considered what amount of reliance can be
placed upon the Irish annals and annalists, who have preserved
to us our early history. If, in those few cases where we happen
to have some credible external evidences of early events, we find
our native annalists notoriously at variance with such evidences,
our faith in them must of necessity be shaken. If, on the other
hand, we find them to coincide fairly well with these other
accounts taken from foreign sources, we shall be inclined to
place all the more reliance on their accuracy when they record
events upon which no such sidelights can be thrown.
Now, from the nature of the case, it is exceedingly difficult,
considering how isolated Ireland was while evolving her own
civilisation, and considering how little in early ages her internal
affairs clashed with those of Europe, to find any specific events
,*-. of which we have early external evidence. We can, for instance,
apart from our own annals and poems, procure no corrobora-
tive evidence of the division of Ireland between Conn and
Owen, of the destruction of Emania by the Three Collas, or of
the battle of Gabhra. But despite the silence upon Irish affairs
of ancient foreign writers, we have luckily another class of
proof of the highest possible value, brought to light by the dis-
38
CAN NATIVE SOURCES BE RELIED ON? 39
coveries of modern science, and powerfully strengthening the
credibility of our annals. This is nothing less than the record
of natural phenomena. If we find, on calculating backwards,
as modern science has enabled us to do, that such events as the
appearance of comets or the occurrence of eclipses are recorded
to the day and hour by the annalists, we can know with some-
thing like certainty that these phenomena were recorded at the
time of their appearance by writers who observed them, whose
writings must have been actually consulted and seen by those
later annalists, whose books we now possess. Nobody could
think of saying of natural phenomena thus accurately recorded,
as they might of mere historical narratives, that they were
handed down by tradition only, and reduced to writing for the
first time many centuries later. Now it so happens that the
Annals of Ulster, annals which treat of Ireland and Irish his-
tory from about the year 444, but of which the written copy
dates only from the fifteenth century, contain from the year
496 to 884, as many as 18 records of eclipses and comets
which agree exactly even to the day and hour with the
calculations of modern astronomers. How impossible it is
to keep such records unless written memoranda are made of
them by eye-witnesses, is shown by the fact that Bede, born
himself in 675, in recording the great solar eclipse which took
place only eleven years before his own birth is yet two days
astray in his date ; while, on the other hand, the Ulster annals
give not only the correct day but the correct hour — thus
showing that Cathal Maguire, their compiler, had access
either to the original or to a copy of the original account of an
eye-witness.1
Again, we occasionally find the early records of the two great
1 Nor is this mere conjecture ; it is fully borne out by the annals them-
selves, which actually give us their sources of information. Thus under
the year 439, we read that " Chronicon magnum (i.e., The Senchas Mor)
scriptum est "; at 467 and 468, the compiler quotes " Sic in Libro Cuanach
inveni " ; at 482, " Ut Guana scripsit " ; in 507, " Secundum librum
Mochod " ; in 628, " Sicut in libro Dubhdaleithe narratur," &c.
40 LITERARY HISTORY OP IRELAND
branches of the Celtic race, the Gaelic and the Cymric, throwing
a mutual light upon each other. There exists, for instance, an
ancient Irish saga, of which several versions have come down
to us, a saga well known in Irish literature under the
title of the Expulsion of the Desi,1 which, according to
Zimmer — than whom there can be no better authority — was,
judging from its linguistic forms, committed to writing in the
eighth century. The Desi were a tribe settled in Bregia, in
Meath, and the Annals 2 tell us that the great Cormac mac
Art defeated them in seven battles, forcing them to emigrate and
seek new homes. This composition describes their wanderings
in detail. Some of the tribe we are told migrated to Munster,
whilst another portion crossed the Irish Sea and settled down
in that part of South Wales called Dyfed, under the leadership
of one Eochaidh [Yohy], thence called " from-over-sea." There
Eochaidh with his sons and grand-children lived and died, and
propagated themselves to the time of the writer, who states
that they were then — at the time he wrote — ruled over by one
Teudor mac Regin, king of Dyfed, who was then alive, and
whose pedigree is traced in fourteen generations up to the
father of that Eochaidh who had led them over in Cormac mac
Art's time. Taking a generation as 33 years, and starting with
the year 270, about the time of the expulsion of the Desi, we
find that Teudor Mac Regin should have reigned about the
year 730, and the Irish saga must have been written at this
time, which agrees with Zimmer's reckoning, although his
computation is based on purely linguistic grounds. That school
of interpreters who decry all ancient Irish history as a mixture
of mythology and fiction, and who can see in Cormac mac
Art only a sun-god, would probably ascribe the expulsion of the
Desi and other records of a similar nature to the creative imagi-
nation of the later Irish, who, they hold, invented their genea-
logies as they did their history. But in this case it happens by
the merest accident that we have collateral evidence of these
1 " Indarba inna nDesi." 2 See " Four Masters," A.D. 265.
CAN NATIVE SOURCES BE RELIED ON? 41
events, for in a Welsh pedigree of Ellen, mother of Owen, son
of Howel Dda, preserved in a manuscript of the eleventh cen-
tury, this same Teudor is mentioned, and his genealogy traced
back by the Welsh scribe ; the names of eleven of his ancestors,
corresponding — except for inconsiderable orthographical differ-
ences— with those preserved in the ancient Irish text.
" When we consider," says Dr. Kuno Meyer, " that these Welsh
names passed through the hands of who knows how many Irish
scribes, one must marvel that they have preserved their forms so
well ; " and he adds, " in the light of this evidence alone, I have no
hesitation in saying that the settlement of an Irish tribe in Dyfed
during the latter half of the third century must be considered a well-
authenticated fact." *
Dr. Reeves cites another remarkable case of undesigned coin-
cidence which strongly testifies to the accuracy of the Irish
annalists. In the Antiphonary of Bangor, an ancient service
book still preserved on the Continent, we find the names of
fifteen abbots of the celebrated monastery of Bangor — at which
the heresiarch Pelagius was probably educated — and these
fifteen abbots are recorded by the same names and in the same
order as in the Annals; "and this undesigned coincidence," says
Reeves, " is the more interesting because the testimonies are
perfectly independent, the one being afforded by Irish records
which never left the kingdom, and the other by a Latin com-
position which has been a thousand years absent from the
country where it was written.'*
Another incidental proof of the accuracy of early Irish
literary records is afforded by the fact that on the few occa-
sions where the Saxon Bede, when making mention of some
Scot, /.*., Irishman, gives also the name of his father, this
name coincides with that given by the annals.
We may, then, take it, without any credulity on our part,
1 See Kuno Meyer's paper on the " Early Relations between the Gael
and Brython," read before the Hon. Society of Cymmrodorion, May 28,
1896.
42 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
that Irish history as drawn from native sources may be very
well relied upon from about the middle of the fourth century.
Beyond that date, going backwards, we have no means at our
disposal for checking its accuracy or inaccuracy, no means of
determining the truth of such events as the struggle between
Conn and Owen, between the Fenian bands and the High-
king, between Ulster under Conor and Connacht under
Meve, no means of determining the actual existence of
Conaire the Great, or of Cuchulain, or of the heroes of the
Red Branch, or of Finn mac Cumhail [Cool] and his son
Ossian and his grandson Oscar. Is there any solid ground
for treating these things as objective history ?
It has been urged that it is unphilosophic of us and was
unphilosophic of the annalist Tighearnach to fix the reign of
Cimbaeth * [Kimbae], who built Emania, the capital of
Ulster, some three hundred years before Christ, as a terminus
from which we may begin to place some confidence in Irish
accounts, seeing that the Annals carry back the list of Irish
kings with apparently equal certainty for centuries past him,
and back even to the coming of the Milesians, which took
place at the lowest computation some six or seven hundred
years before. All that can be said in answer to this, is to
point out that there must have been hundreds of documents
existing at the time when Tighearnach wrote, " the countless
hosts of the illuminated books of the men of Erin," as his con-
temporary Angus called them — records of the past which he
was able to examine and consult, but which we are not.
1 To start with Cimbaeth as Tighearnach does " is just as uncritical as
to take the whole tale of kings from the very beginning," says Dr.
Atkinson, in his preface to the Contents of the facsimile Book of Leinster ;
and he adds, " if the kings who are supposed to have lived about fifteen
centuries before Christ are mere figments, which is tolerably certain, there
is little more reason for believing in the kings who reigned after Christ
prior to the introduction of writing with Christianity (sic) into the island,"
— an unconvincing sorites! One hundred and thirty-six pagan and six
Christian kings in all reigned at Tara according to the fictions of the Bards.
CAN NATIVE SOURCES BE RELIED ON? 43
Tighearnach was a professed annalist, "a modern but cautious
chronicler," x and for his age a very well-instructed man, and
it seems evident that he would not have placed the founding
of Emania as a terminus a quo if he had not inferred rightly or
wrongly that native accounts could be fairly trusted from that
forward. It certainly creates some feeling of confidence to
find him pushing aside as uncertain and unproven the arid roll
of kings so confidently carried back for hundreds of years
before his starting-point. The historic sense was well
developed in Tighearnach, and he no doubt discredited these
far-reaching claims either because he could not find sufficiently
early documentary evidence to corroborate them, or more
likely because such accounts as he had access to, began to
contradict one another and were unable to stand any scrutiny
from this time backwards. With him it was probably largely
a question of documents. But this brings us at once to the
question, when did the Irish learn the use of letters and begin
to write, to which we shall turn our attention in a future
chapter.
1 Dr. Whitley Stokes' "Tripartite Life of St. Patrick," vol. i. p. cxxix.
" That Tighearnach had access to some library or libraries furnished with
books of every description is manifest from his numerous references ; and
the correctness of his citations from foreign authors, with whose works
we are acquainted may be taken as a surety for the genuineness of his
extracts from the writings of our own native authors now lost." For the
non-Irish portions of his annals Tighearnach used, as Stokes has shown,
St. Jerome's " Interpretatio Chronicae Eusebii Pamphili," the seven books
of the history of Paulus Orosius, " The Chronicon, or Account of the Six
Ages of the World," in Bede's Works, "The Vulgate," "The Etymolo-
garium," " Libri XX of Isodorus Hispalensis," Josephus' " Antiquities of
the Jews," probably in a Latin translation, and perhaps the lost Chronicon
of Julius Africanus.
CHAPTER V
THE PRE-MILESIAN FABLE AND EARLY PANTHEON
IN investigating the very early history of Ireland we are met
with a mass of pseudo-historic narrative and myth, woven
together into an apparently homogeneous whole, and all now
posing as real history. This is backed up, and eked out, by a
most elaborate system of genealogy closely interwoven with
it, which, together with a good share of the topographical
nomenclature of the island, is there to add its entire influence
to that of historian and annalist in apparently attesting the
truth of what these latter have recorded.
If in seeking for a path through this maze we grasp the
skirt of the genealogist and follow his steps for a clue, we shall
find ourselves, in tracing into the past the ancestry of any
Milesian chief, invariably landed at the foot of some one
of four persons, three of them, Ir, Eber, Eremon,1 being sons
of that Milesius who made the Milesian conquest, and the
fourth being Lughaidh [Lewy], son of Ith, who was a
nephew of the same. On one or other of these four does the
genealogy of every chief and prince abut, so that all end
ultimately in Milesius.
Milesius' own genealogy and the wanderings of his ancestors
1 In modern times spelt Eibhear [^Evir] and Eireamhoin [^E
44
PRE-MILESIAN FABLE AND PANTHEON 45
are also recounted for many generations before they land in
Ireland, but during this pre-Milesian period there are no side-
genealogies, the ancestors of Milesius himself alone are given,
traced through twenty-two apparently Gaelic names and
thirteen Hebrew ones, passing through Japhet and ending in
Adam. It is only with the landing of the three sons and
the nephew of Milesius that the ramifications of Irish genea-
logies begin, and they are backed up by the whole weight of
the Irish topographical system which is shot through and
through with places named after personages and events of the
early Milesian period, and of the period of the Tuatha De
Danann.
It will be well to give here a brief resume of the accounts of
the Milesians' wanderings before they arrived in Ireland. Briefly
then the Gaels are traced back all the way to Fenius Farsa, a
king of Scythia, who is then easily traced up to Adam. But
beginning with this Fenius Farsa we find that he started a
great school for learning languages. His son was Niul, who
also taught languages, and his son again was Gaedhal, from
whom the Gaels are so called. . This Niul went into Egypt
and married Scota, daughter of Pharaoh. This is a post-
Christian invention, which is not satisfied without bringing
Niul into contact with Aaron, whom he befriended, in return
for which Moses healed his son Gaedhal from the bite of a
serpent. Since then says an ancient verse —
" No serpent nor vile venomed thing
Can live upon the Gaelic soil,
No bard nor stranger since has found
A cold repulse from a son of Gaedhal."
Gaedhal's son was Esru, whose son was Sru, and when the
Egyptians oppressed them he and his people emigrated to
Crete. His son was Eber Scot, from whom some say the
Gaels were called Scots, but most of the Irish antiquarians
maintain that they are called Scots because they once came
46 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
from Scythia,1 to which cradle of the race Eber Scot led the
nation back again. Expelled from Scythia a couple of genera-
tions later the race plant themselves in the country of Gaeth-
luighe, where they were ruled over by one called Eber of
the White Knee. The eighth in descent from him emigrated
with four ships to Spain. His son was Breogan, who built
Brigantia. His grandson was Golamh, called Miledh Easpain,
/.*., Warrior of Spain,2 whose name has been universally, but
badly, Latinised Milesius, and it was his three sons and his
nephew who landed in Ireland and who planted there the
Milesian people. Milesius himself never put foot in Ireland,
but he seems in his own person to have epitomised the
wanderings of his race, for we find him returning to Scythia,
making his way thence into Egypt, marrying Scota, a daughter
of Pharaoh, and finally returning to Spain.
Much or all of this pre-Milesian account of the race must be
unhesitatingly set down to the influence of Christianity, and
to the invention of early Christian bards who felt a desire to
trace their kings back to Japhet.3 The native unchristianised
1 It is just as likely that, as the only name of any people known to the
early Irish antiquaries which bore some resemblance to their own was
Scythia, they said that the Scoti came from thence.
2 " The race of the warrior of Spain " continued until recent times to be
a favourite bardic synonym for the Milesians. There is a noble war ode
by one of the O'Dalys which I found preserved in the so-called " Book of
the O'Byrnes," in Trinity College Library, in which he celebrates a victory
of the O'Byrnes of Wicklow over the English about the year 1580 in
these words : —
" Sgeul tdsgmhar do rdinigfd chriochaibh Fail
Da tdinig Idn-tuile i nGaoidhiltigh (?) Chldir.
Do chloinn aird dithiosaigh Mhile Easpdin
Toisg airmioch (?), ar Idr an laoi ghil bhdin."
It is to be observed that of the four great Irish stocks the descendants of
Ith are often called the Clanna Breogain.
3 Nennius, in the time of Charlemagne, quotes the Annals of the Scots,
and the narrative of the peritissimi Scotorum as his authorities for deducing
the Scots, i.e. Irish, from a family of Scythia, who fled out of Egypt with
the children of Israel, which shows that the original narrative had
assumed this Christian form in the eighth century. In the Book of
PRE-MILESIAN FABLE AND PANTHEON 47
genealogies all converge in the sons and nephew of Milesius.
The legends of their exploits and those of their successors are
the real race-heritage of the Gael, unmixed with the fanciful
Christian allusions and Hebraic adulterations of the pre-
Milesian story, which was the last to be invented.
The genuine and early combination of Irish myth and history
centres not on foreign but on Irish soil, in the accounts of the
Nemedians, the Firbolg, the Tuatha De Danann, and the early
Milesians, accounts which have been handed down to us in short
stories and more lengthy sagas, as well as in the bold brief
chronicles of the annalists. No doubt the stories of the landing
of his race on Irish soil, and the exploits of his first chieftains were
familiar in the early days to every Gael. They became, as it
were, part and parcel of his own life and being, and were pre-
served with something approaching a religious veneration. His
belief in them entered into his whole political and social system,
the holding of his tribe-lands was bound up with it, and a highly-
paid and influential class of bardic historians was subsidised
with the express purpose of propagating these traditions and
maintaining them unaltered.
Everything around him recalled to the early Gael the
traditional history of his own past. The two hills of Slieve
Luachra in Kerry he called the paps of Dana,1 and he knew
that Dana was the mother of the gods Brian, luchar, and
lucharba, the story of whose sufferings, at the hands of Lugh
Invasions — the earliest MS. of which is of the twelfth century— the Christian
invention has made considerable strides, and we start from Magog, Japhet,
and Noah, and from the Tower of Babel pass into Egypt. Nel or Niul is
called from the Plain of Senaar to the Court of Pharaoh, and marries his
daughter Scota, and their son is named Gaedhal. They have their own
exodus, and arrive in Scythia after many adventures ; thence into Spain,
where Breogan built the tower from whose top Ireland was seen. It would
seem from this that the later writer of the Book of Invasions enhanced the
simpler account which the Irish had given Nennius three or four centuries
before. Zimmer, however, thinks that Nennius quoted from a preceding
Book of Invasions now lost.
1 Da chich Danainne.
48 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
the Long-handed, has in later times so often drawn tears from
its auditors. When he beheld the mighty barrows piled upon
the banks of the Boyne,1 he knew that it was over the
Dagda — an Irish Jupiter — and over his three sons 2 that they
were heaped ; and one of these, Angus of the Boyne, was, down
to the present century, reverenced as the presiding genius of the
spot. The mighty monuments of Knock Aine in Limerick,
and Knock Greine, as well as those of Knowth, Dowth, and
New Grange, were all connected with his legendary past. It
was Lugh of the Tuatha De Danann, he knew, who had first
established the great fair of Tailltin,3 to which he and his
friends went from year to year to meet each other, and contract
alliances for their grown children. The great funeral mound,
round which the games were held, was sacred to Talti, the foster-
mother of Lugh, who had there been buried, and in whose
honour the games in which he participated were held upon the
day which he called — and still calls, though he has now for-
gotten why — Lughnasa or Lugh's gathering.4 His own
country he called — and still calls — by the various names of
Eire, Fodhla [Fola], and Banba, and they, as he knew, were
three queens 5 of the Tuatha De Danann. The Gael of
Connacht knew that Moycullen, near Galway, was so named
from Uillin, a grandson of the Tuatha De Danann king
Nuada ; and Loch Corrib from Orbsen, the other name of the
sea-god Manannan, slain there by this Uillin, and each of the
provinces was studded with such memorials.
The early Milesian invaders left their names just as closely
1 Sidh an Bhrogha [Shee in Vrow-a].
2 Aengus, Aedh, and Cermad.
3 Now monstrously called Telltown by the Ordnance Survey people, as
though to make it as like an English word as possible, quite heedless of the
remonstrance of the great topographer O'Donavan, and of the fact that
they are demolishing a great national landmark.
4 Or perhaps " Lugh's Memorial." Lughnas is the 1st of August, and
the month has received its name in Irish from Lugh's gathering.
s The Irish translation of Nennius ascribed to Giolla Caoimhghin [Gilla
Keevin], who died in 1012, calls them goddesses, " tri bande Folia Banba
ocus Eire."
PRE-MILESIAN FABLE AND PANTHEON 49
imprinted upon our topography as did their predecessors the
Tuatha De Danann. The great plain of Bregia in Meath was
so called from Brega, son of that Breogan who built Brigantia.
Slieve Cualann in Wicklow — now hideously and absurdly called
the Great Sugar Loaf ! — is named from Cuala, another son of
Breogan ; Slieve Bladhma, or Bloom, is called from another son
of the same ; and from yet another is named the Plain of
Muirthemni, where was fought the great battle in which fell
Cuchulain "fortissimus heros Scotorum." The south of
Munster is called Corca Luighe from Lughaidh, son of Ith,
nephew of Milesius. The harbour of Drogheda was called
Inver Colpa, from Colpa of the sword, another son of Milesius,
who was there drowned when trying to effect a landing.
The Carlingford Mountains were called Slieve Cualgni, and
a well-known mountain in Armagh Slieve Fuad, from two
more sons of Breogan of Brigantia, slain after the second
battle with the Tuatha De Danann, while they followed up
the chase. The sandhills in the west of Munster, where
Donn, the eldest son of Milesius, was shipwrecked and lost his
life — as did his whole crew consisting as is said of twenty-four
warriors, five chiefs, twelve women, four servants, eight
rowers, and fifty youths-in-training — is called Donn's House.
So vivid is this tradition even still, that we find a Munster poet
as late as the last century addressing a poem to this Donn as
the tutelary divinity of the place, and asking him to take him
into his sidh [shee] or fairy mound and become his patron.
This poem is remarkable, as showing that in popular opinion
the early Milesians shared the character of sub-gods, fairies, or
beings of supernatural power, in common with the Tuatha
De Danann themselves, for the poet treats him as still living
and reigning in state, as peer of Angus of the Boyne, and
cousin of Cliona, queen of the Munster fairies.1 Wherever he
1 It is worth while to quote some of these hitherto unpublished verses
from a copy in my possession. The author, Andrew Mac Curtin, a good
scholar and poet of Munster, knew of course perfectly well that Donn
D
50 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
turned the Gael was thus confronted with scenes from his own
past, or with customs — like the August games at Tailltin —
deliberately established to perpetuate them.
In process of time, partly perhaps through the rationalising
influences of a growing civilisation, but chiefly through the
direct action of Christianity, with which he came into active
contact in perhaps the fourth, or certainly in the fifth cen-
tury, the remembrance of the old Gaelic theogony, and the old
Gaelic deities and his religious belief in them became blunted,
and although no small quantity of matter that is purely pagan,
and an immense amount of matter, but slightly tinged with
Christianity, has been handed down to us, yet gods, heroes,
was a Milesian, yet he, embodying in his poem the popular opinion on the
subject, treats him as a god or superior being, calls him brother or cousin
of Aine and Aoife [Eefi] and " of the great son of Lear [i.e. Manannan],
who used to walk the smooth sea," and relates him to Angus Og, and Lugh
the Long-handed, says that he witnessed the tragedy of the sons of Usnach,
the feats of Finn mac Cool, and the battle of Clontarf, and treats him as
still living and powerful. The poem begins, Beannughadh doimhin duit a
Dhoinn na Ddibhchc. It goes on to say —
" Nach tu brathair Aine as Aoife
A's mic an Deaghadh do b' ard-fhlaith ar tiorthaibh,
A's moir-mhic Lir do ritheadh an mhin-mhuir
Dhoinn Chnuic-na-ndos agus Dhoinn Chnuic Firinn' ?
Nach tu gan^doirbhe do h-oileadh 'san riogh-bhrogh
Ag Aongus 6g na Boinne caoimhe,
Do bhi tu ag Lugha ad' chongnamh i gcaoinsgir [cath]
Ag claoidh Balair a dhanar 's a dhraoithe.
Do bhi tu ag maidhm anaghaidh mic Mhiledh
Ag teacht asteach thar neart na gaoithe :
'S na dhiaigh sin i gciantaibh ag Naoise ;
Do bhi tu ag Conall 'san gcosgar do bh' aoirde
Ag ceann de'n ghad de cheannaibh righteadh :
Budh thaoiseach treasa i gcathaibh Chuinn thu."
The allusion in the last line but one is to the heads that Conall Cearnach
strung upon the gad or rod, to avenge the death of Cuchulain, for which
see later on.
Curtin finally asks Donn to let him into his fairy mansion, if not as a
poet to enliven his feasts, then at least as a horse-boy to groom his horses.
" Munar bhodhar thu o throm ghuth na taoide
No mur bhfuarais bas mar chach a Dhoinn ghil," &c.
I.e., " unless thou hast grown deaf by the constant voice of the tide, or
unless, O bright Donn, thou hast died like everybody else ! "
PRE-MILESIAN FABLE AND PANTHEON 51
and men have been so far brought to a common level, that it
is next to impossible at first sight to disentangle them or to say
which is which.
Very probably there was, even before the introduction of
Christianity, no sharply-defined line of demarcation drawn
between gods and heroes, that, in the words of Pindar, £v
avSpuv ev Gewv ycvoc, " one was the race of gods and men,"
and when in after times the early mythical history of Ireland
came to be committed to parchment, its historians saw in the
Irish pantheon nothing but a collection of human beings. It
is thus, no doubt, that we find the Fomorians and the Tuatha
De Danann posing as real people, whilst in reality it is more
than likely that they figured in the scheme of Gaelic mythology
as races of beneficent gods and of evil deities, or at least as
races of superhuman power.
The early Irish writers who redacted the mythical history
of the country were no doubt imbued with the spirit of the
so-called Greek " logographers," who, when collecting the
Grecian myths from the poets, desired, while not eliminating
the miraculous, yet to smooth away all startling discrepancies
and present them in a readable and, as it were, a historical
series.1 Others no doubt wished to rationalise the early myths
so far as they conveniently could, as even Herodotus shows an
inclination to do with regard to the Greek marvels ; and the
later annalists and poets of the Irish went as far as ever went
Euhemerus, reducing gods and heroes alike to the level of
common men.
We find Keating, who composed in Irish his Forus Feasa
or History, in the first half of the seventeenth century,
and who only re-writes or abbreviates what he found before
him in the ancient books of the Gaels now lost, distracted
between his desire to euhemerise — in pther words, to make
mere men of the gods and heroes — and his unflinching fidelity
1 Hellanikus, one of the best known of these, went so far as to give the
very year, and even the very day of the capture of Troy.
52 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
to his ancient texts. Thus he professes to give the names of
"the most famous and noble persons of the Tuatha De Danann,"
and amongst them he mentions " the six sons of Delbaeth, son
of Ogma, namely, Fiacadh, Ollamh, Indaei, Brian, luchar,
and lucharba" * but in another place he quotes this verse from
some of his ancient sources —
" Brian lucharba and the great luchar,
The three gods of the sacred race of Dana,
Fell at Mana on the resistless sea
By the hand of Lughaidh, son of Ethlenn."
These whom the ancient verse distinctly designates as gods,
Keating makes merely " noble persons," but at the very same
time in treating of the De Danann he interpolates amongst his
list of their notable men and women this curious sentence : 2
1 Mac Firbis, in his great MS. book of genealogies, marks the mythical
character of these personages still more clearly, for in his short chapter
on the Tuatha De Danann he describes them as of light yellow hair, etc.
[monga finbuidhe orra], and gives the names of their three Druids and
their three distributors, who were called Enough, Plenty, Filling [Sdith,
Leor, Linad] ; their three gillies, three horses, three hounds, three musicians ;
Music Sweet and Sweetstring [Ceol Bind Tetbind], and so on, all evidently
allegorical. See facsimile of the Book of Leinster, p. 30, col. 4, 1. 40, and
p. 187, col. 3, 1. 55, for the oldest form of this.
2 The following is the whole quotation from O'Mahony's Keating (for an
account of this book see below, p. 556) : " Here follows an enumeration
of the most famous and noble persons of the Tuatha Da Danann, viz.,
Eochaidh the Ollamh called the Dagda, Ogma, Alloid, Bres, and Delbaeth,
the five sons of Elathan, son of Niad, and Manannan, son of Alloid,
son of Delbaeth. The six sons of Delbaeth, son of Ogma, namely,
Fiachadh, Ollamh, Indaei, Brian, luchar, and lucharba. Aengus Aedh
Kermad and Virdir, the four sons of the Dagda. Lughaidh, son of Cian,
son of Diancecht, sons of Esary, son of Niad, son of Indaei. Gobnenn the
smith, Credni the artist, Diancecht the physician, Luchtan the mason, and
Carbni the poet, son of Tura, son of Turell. Begneo, son of Carbni, Cat-
cenn, son of Tabarn, Fiachadh, son of Delbaeth, with his son Ollamh,
Caicer and Nechtan, the two sons of Namath. Eochaidh the rough, son
of Duach Dall. Sidomel, the son of Carbri Crom, son of Elcmar, son of
Delbaeth. Eri Fodhla and Banba, the three daughters of Fiachadh, son
of Delbaeth, son of Ogma, and Ernin, daughter of Edarlamh, the mother
of these women. The following are the names of their three goddesses,
viz., Badhbh, Macha, and Morighan. Bechoil and Danaan were their two
Ban-tuathachs, or chief ladies, Brighid was their poetess. Fe and Men
PRE-MILESIAN FABLE AND PANTHEON 53
" The following are the names of three of their goddesses, viz.,
Badhbh. [Bive], Macha, and Morighan." *
There are many allusions to the old Irish pantheon in
Cormac's Glossary, which is a compilation of the ninth or tenth
century explanatory of expressions which had even at that early
date become obscure or obsolete, and many of these are evidently
of pagan origin. Cormac describes Ana as mater deorum hiber-
nensium^ the mother of the Irish gods, and he adds, "Well
used she to nourish the gods, it is from her name is said * anae,'
/.*., abundance, and from her name is called the two paps of
Ana." Buanann, says Cormac, was the " nurse of heroes," as
" Anu was mother of the gods, so Buanann was mother of the
c Fiann.' " Etan was nurse of the poets. Brigit, of which
we have now made a kind of national Christian name, was in
pagan times a female poet, daughter of the Dagda. Her
divinity is evident from what Cormac says of her, namely, that
" she was a goddess whom poets worshipped, for very great
and very noble was her superintendence, therefore call they
her goddess of poets by this name, whose sisters were Brigit,
woman of smith- work, and Brigit, woman of healing, namely,
goddesses — from whose names Brigit 2 was with all Irishmen
called a goddess," *.*., the terms "Brigit" and "goddess" were
synonymous (?) The name itself he derives fancifully from
the words breo-shaighit^ "fiery arrow," as though the inspirations
were the ladies or ban-tuathachs of their two king-bards, and from them
Magh Femen in Munster has its name. Of them also was Triathri Tore,
from whom Tretherni in Munster is called. Cridinbhel, Brunni, and
Casmael were their three satirists."
1 O' Curry, who, like his great compeer O'Donovan, naturally took the
De Danann to be a real race of men, comically calls these goddesses
" three of the noble non-professional druidesses of the Tuatha De Danann."
(u M. and C.," vol. ii. p. 187). We have seen how the Irish Nennius calls
the three queens of the De Danann goddesses also.
2 The " g " of Brigit was pronounced in Old Irish so that the word rhymed
to English spiggit. In later times the " g " became aspirated and
silent, the " t " turned into " d," and the word is now pronounced
" B'reed," and in English very often <( Bride," which is an improvement
on the hideous Brid-get.
54 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
of a poet pierced like fiery arrows. Diancecht Cormac calls
" the sage of the leech-craft of Ireland," but in the next line
we read that he was so called because he was " Dia na c£cht,"
i.e.y Deus salutis, or god of health. Zeuss quotes an incantation
to this god from a manuscript which is, he says, at least a
thousand years old. His daughter was Etan, an artificer, one
of whose sayings is quoted by Cormac. Neith was the god of
battle among the Irish pagans, Nemon was his wife. The
euhemerising tendency comes out strongly in Cormac's
account of Manannan, a kind of Irish Proteus and Neptune
combined, who according to him was "a renowned trader
who dwelt in the Isle of Man, he was the best pilot in the
West of Europe ; through acquaintance with the sky he knew
the quarter in which would be fair weather and foul weather,
and when each of these two seasons would change. Hence
the Scots and Britons called him a god of the sea. Thence,
too, they said he was the sea's son — Mac Lir, i.e.y son of the
sea."
Another ancient Irish gloss * alludes to the mysterious
Mor-rigan or war-goddess, of whom we shall hear more later
on ; and to Machae, another war-goddess, " of whom is said
Machae's mast-feeding," meaning thereby, u the heads of men
that have been slaughtered."
From all that we have said it clearly appears that carefully
as the Christianised Irish strove to euhemerise their pantheon,
they were unable to succeed. If, as Keating acknowledges,
Brian, luchar, and lucharba were gods, then a fortiori much
more so must have been the more famous Lugh, who compassed
their death, and the Dagda, and Angus Og. Keating himself,
in giving us a list of the famous Tuatha De Danann has
probably given us also the names of a large number of primitive
Celtic deities — not that these were at all confined to the De
Danann tribes.
It is remarkable that there is no mention of temples nor of
1 H. 2, 16, col. 119. Quoted by Stokes, " Old Irish Glossaries," p. xxxv.
'
PRE-MILESIAN FABLE AND PANTHEON 55
churches dedicated to these Irish gods, nor do we find any of
those inscriptions to them which are so common in Gaul,
Belgium, Switzerland, and even Britain, but they appear from
passages in Cormac's Glossary x to have had altars and images
dedicated to them.
We are forced, then, to come to the conclusion that the
pagan Irish once possessed a large pantheon, probably as highly
organised as that of the Scandinavians, but owing to their
earlier and completer conversion to Christianity only traces of
it now remain.
1 See the word " Hindelba " in the Glossary which is thus explained, " i.e.,
the names of the altars or of those idols from the thing which they used
to make(?) on them, namely, the delba or images of everything which
they used to worship or of the beings which they used to adore, as, for
instance, the form or figure of the sun on the altar." Again, the word
" Hidoss " is explained as coming from " the Greek f-Uog which is found in
Latin, from which the word idolum, namely, the shapes or images
[arrachta] of the idols [or elements] which the Pagans used formerly to
make."
CHAPTER VI
EVIDENCE OF TOPOGRAPHY AND GENEALOGY
THE ramifications of early Irish literary history and its claims
to antiquity are so multiple, intricate, and inter-connected, that
it is difficult for any one who has not made a close study of it
to form a conception of the extent it covers and the various
districts it embraces. The early literature of Ireland is so
bound up with the early history, and the history so bound up and
associated with tribal names, memorial sites, patronymics, and
topographical nomenclature, that it presents a kind of hetero-
geneous whole, that which is recognised history running into
and resting upon suspected or often even evident myth, while
tribal patronymics and national genealogies abut upon both,
and the whole is propped and supported by legions of place-
names still there to testify, as it were, to the truth of all.
We have already glanced st some of the marks left by
the mysterious De Danann race upon our nomenclature.
Mounds, raths, and tumuli, called after them, dot all Ireland.
It is the same with the early Milesians. It is the same
with the men of the great pseudo-historic cycle of story-
telling, that of Cuchulain and the Red Branch, not to speak of
minor cycles. There is never a camping-ground of Meve's
army on their march a century B.C. from Rathcroghan in
56
TOPOGRAPHY AND GENEALOGY 57
Roscommon to the plain of Mochruime in Louth, and never
a skirmish fought by them that has not given its name to some
plain or camping-ground or ford. Passing from the heroes of
the Red Branch to the history of Finn mac Cool and the
Fenians, we find the same thing. Finn's seat, the Hill of the
Fenians, Diarmuid and Grainne's bed, and many other names
derived from them or incidents connected with them, are
equally widely scattered.
The question now arises, does the undoubted existence of
these place-names, many of them mentioned in the very oldest
manuscripts we have — these manuscripts being only copies of
still more ancient ones now lost — mentioned, too, in connec-
tion with the celebrated events which are there said to have
given them their names, do these and the universally received
genealogies of historic tribes which trace themselves back to
some ancestor who figured at the time when these place-names
were imposed, form credible witnesses to their substantial
truth ? In other words, are such names as Creeveroe x (Red
Branch) given to the spot where the Red Branch heroes have
been always represented as residing ; or Ardee 2 (Ferdia's Ford)
where Cuchulain fought his great single fight with that
champion — are these to be accepted as collateral evidence of the
Red Branch heroes of Ferdia and of Cuchulain ? Are See-
finn2 (Finn's seat) or Rath Coole2 (Cool's rath) to be
accepted as proving the existence of Finn and his father
Cool ?
In my opinion no stress, or very little, can be laid upon the
argument from topography, which weighed so heavily with
Keating, O'Donovan, and O'Curry, for if it is admitted at all it
proves too much. If it proves the objective existence of Finn
1 Craobh-ruadh.
2 I.e., Ath-Fhirdia, Suidhe Fhinn, Rath Chumhail. There are See-finns
or See-inns, i.e., Finn's seats in Cavan, Armagh, Down, King's County,
Galway, Mayo, Sligo, Tyrone, and perhaps elsewhere, and there are many
forts, flats, woods, rivers, bushes, and heaps, which derive their name from
the Fenians.
58 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
and of Cuchulain, so does it that of Dana, " the mother of the
gods," and of divinities by the score. Besides the Gaels brought
their topographical nomenclature with them to Alba, and
places named from Finn and the Fenians, are nearly as plentiful
there as in Ireland. Wherever the early Gaels went they took
with them their heroic legends, and wherever they settled place-
names relating to their legends which were so much a part of
their intellectual life, grew up round them too. Something of
the same kind may be seen in Greece — a land which presents
so many and so striking analogies to that of the Gael ; for
wherever a Grecian colony settled, east or west, it was full of
memorials of the legendary past, and Jasonia, or temples of
Jason, and other memorials of the voyage of the Argonauts, are
to be found from Abdera to Thrace, eastward along the coast
of the Euxine and in the heart of Armenia and Media, just as
memorials of the flight of Diarmuid and of Grainne from
before Finn mac Cool may be found wherever the Gael are
settled in Ireland, in Scotland, or the Isles.
Having come to the conclusion that Irish topography is
useless for proving the genuineness of past history, let us look
at Irish genealogy. When the Mac Carthys, descendants of
Mac Carthy Mor, trace themselves through Oilioll Olum, king
of Ireland in the second century, to Eber Finn, son of Milesius ;
when the O'Briens of Thomond trace themselves to the same
through Oilioll Olum's second son ; when the O'Carrolls of Ely
trace themselves to the same through Cian, the third son ; when
the O'Neills trace themselves back through Niall of the Nine
Hostages, and Conn of the Hundred Battles to Eremon, son of
Milesius ; when the O'Driscolls trace themselves to Ith, who
was uncle of Milesius ; when the Magennises trace themselves
through Conall Cearnach, the Red Branch hero, back to Ir,
the son of Milesius ; and when every sept and name and family
and clan in Ireland fit in, and even in our oldest manuscripts
have always fitted in, each in its own place, with universally
mutual acknowledgment and unanimity, each man carefully
TOPOGRAPHY AND GENEALOGY 59
counting his ancestors through their hundredfold ramifications,
and tracing them back first to him from whom they get their
surname, and next to him from whom they get their tribe
name, and from thence to the founder of their house, who in
his turn grafts on to one of the great stems (Eremonian, Eberian,
Irian, or Ithian)1 ; and when not only political friendships and
alliances, but the very holding of tribal lands, depended upon
the strict registration and observance of these things — we ask
again do such facts throw any light upon the credibility of
early Irish history and early Irish records ?
The whole intricate system of Irish genealogy, jealously
preserved from the very first, as all Irish literature goes to
show,2 played so important a part in Irish national history and
in Irish social life, and is at the same time so intimately bound
up with the people's traditions and literature, and throws so
much light upon the past, that it will be well to try to get a
grip of this curious and intricate subject, so important for all
who would attempt to arrive at any knowledge of the life and
feelings of the Irish and Scottish Gael, and upon which so
much formerly depended in the history and alliances of both
races.
All Milesian families trace themselves, as I have said, to one or
other of the three sons of Milesius, who were Eremon, Eber, and
Ir, or to his uncle Ith, who landed in Ireland at any time between
1 As the various Teutonic races of Germany traced themselves up to one
of the three main stems, Ingasvones, Iscsevones, and Herminones, who
sprang from the sons of Mannus, whose father was the god Tuisco.
2 A large part of the Books of Leinster, Ballymote, and Lecan, is occu-
pied with these genealogies, continued up to date in each book. The MSS.
H. 3. 18 and H. 2. 4 in Trinity College, Dublin, are great genealogical
compilations. Well-known works were the Book of the genealogies of the
Eugenians, the Book of Meath, the Book of the Connellians (i.e., of Tir-
connell), the genealogy of Brian, son of Eochaidh's descendants (see above,
p. 33), the Book of Oriel,, the Genealogies of the descendants of the Three
Collas (see above, p. 33) in Erin and Scotland, the Book of the Maineach
(men of O' Kelly's country), the Leinster Book of Genealogies, the Ulster
Book, the Munster Book, and others.
60 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
1700 and 800 years before Christ according to Irish computa-
tion.1 But while they all trace themselves back to this point,
it is to be observed that long before they reach it, in each of
the four branches, some place in the long row of ancestors is
arrived at, some name occurs, in which all or most of the
various genealogies meet, and upon which all the branch lines
converge. Thus in the Eberian families it is found that they
all spring from the three sons of Oilioll [Ul-yul] Olum, who
according to all the annals lived in the second century — in this
Oilioll all the Eberian families converge.
Again all, or nearly all, the Irians trace themselves to either
Conall Cearnach or Fergus Mac Roy, the great Red Branch
champions who lived in the North shortly before the birth of
Christ.
The tribes of the Ithians, the least numerous and least im-
portant of the four, seem to meet in Mac Con, king of Ireland,
who lived in the second century, and who is the hero of the
saga called the Battle of Moy Mochruime, where Art, son of
Conn of the Hundred Battles, was slain.
In the line of Eremon only, the greatest of the four, do we
find two pedigrees which meet at points considerably antecedent
to the birth of Christ, for the Dal Riada of Scotland join the
same stem as the O'Neills as much as 390 years before Christ,
and the O'Cavanaghs at a still more remote period, in the reign
of Ugony M6r. But setting aside these two families we find
that all the other great reigning houses, as the Mac Donnells of
Antrim, Maguires^of Fermanagh, O'Kellys of Connacht, and
others, either meet in the third century in Cairbre of the Liffey,
son of King Cormac mac Art, and grandson of Conn of the
Hundred Battles ; or else like the O'Neills of Tyrone,
O'Donnells of Tirconnell, O'Dogherties of Inishowen,
O'Conors of Connacht, O'Flaherties of Galway, they meet in
a still later progenitor — the father of Niall of the Nine
Hostages.
1 See above, p. 17, note 2.
TOPOGRAPHY AND GENEALOGY 61
It will be best to examine here some typical Irish pedigree
that we may more readily understand the system in its simplest
form, and see how families branch from clans, and clans from
stems. Let us take, then, the first pedigree of those given at
the end of the Forus Feasa, that of Mac Carthy Mor, and
study it as a type.
This pedigree begins with Donal, who was the first of the
Mac Carthys to be created Earl of Clancare, or Clancarthy, in
1565. Starting from him the names of all his ancestors are
traced back to Eber, son of Milesius. Passing over his five
immediate ancestors, we come to the sixth. It was he who
built the monastery of Irriallach on the Lake of Killarney.
The seventh ancestor was Donal, from whose brother Donagh
come the families of Ard Canachta and Croc Ornachta. The
tenth was Donal Roe, from whom come the Clan Donal Roe,
and from whose brother, Dermot of Tralee, come the family
of Mac Finneens. The eleventh was Cormac Finn, from
whom come also the Mac Carthys of Duhallow and the kings
of Desmond ; while from his brother Donal come the Mac
Carthys Riabhach, or Grey Mac Carthys. The thirteenth was
Dermot of Kill Baghani, from whom come the Clan Teig Roe
na Sgarti. The fourteenth was Cormac of Moy Tamhnaigh,
from whose brother Teig come the Mac Auliffes of Cork.
The fifteenth was Muireadach, who was the first of the line to
assume the surname of Mac Carthy, which he did from his father
Carthach, from whom all the Siol Carthaigh [Sheeol Caurhy],
or Seed of Carthach, including the Mac Fineens, Mac Auliffes,
etc., are descended. The seventeenth was Saerbhrethach, from
whose brother Murrough spring the sept of the O'Callaghans.
The nineteenth was Callaghan of Cashel, king of Munster, cele-
brated in Irish romance for his warfare with the Danes. The
twenty-third was Snedgus, who had a brother named Fogartach,
from whose son Finguini sprang the Muinntir Finguini, or
Finguini's People. The twenty-eighth was Falbi Flann, who
was king of Munster from 622 to 633, from whose brother
62 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
Finghin sprang the sept of the O'Sullivans. The thirty-second
was Angus, from one son of whom Eochaidh [Yohy] Finn are
descended the O'Keefes ; while from another son Enna, spring
the O'Dalys of Munster — he was the first king of Munster
who became a Christian, and he was slain in 484. The thirty-
fourth was Arc, king of Munster, from whose son Cas, spring
the following septs : The O'Donoghue Mor — from whom,
branched off the O'Donoghue of the Glen — O'Mahony Finn
and O'Mahony Roe, i.e.y the White and Red O'Mahonys, and
O'Mahony of Ui Floinn Laei, and O'Mahony of Carbery, also
O'Mullane * and O'Cronin ; while from his other son, " Cairbre
the Pict," sprang the O'Moriarties, and from Cairbre's grand-
son came the O'Garvans. The thirty-sixth ancestor was Olild
Flann Beg, king of Munster, who had a son from whom are
descended the sept of O'Donovan, and the O'Coileains, or
Collinses. And a grandson from whom spring the O'Meehans,
O'Hehirs, and the Mac Davids of Thomond. The thirty-
seventh, Fiachaidh, was well known in Irish romance ; the
thirty-eighth was Eoghan, or Owen Mor, from whom all the
septs of the Eoghanachts, or Eugenians of Munster come, who
embrace every family and sept hitherto mentioned, and many
more. They are carefully to be distinguished from the Dal-
cassians, who are descended from Owen's second son Cas. It
was the Dalcassians who, with Brian Boru at their head, pre-
served Ireland from the Danes and won Clontarf. For many
centuries the history of Munster is largely composed of the
struggles between these two septs for the kingship. The thirty-
ninth is the celebrated Oilioll [Ulyul] Olum, king of Mun-
ster, whose wail of grief over his son Owen is a stock piece in
Irish MSS. He is a son of the great Owen, better known as
Mogh Nuadhat, or Owen the Splendid, who wrested half the
1 The great Daniel O'Connell's mother belonged to this sept of the
O'Mullanes, and the so-called typical Hibernian physiognomy of the
Liberator was derived from her people, whom he nearly resembled, and
not from the O'Connells.
TOPOGRAPHY AND GENEALOGY 63
kingdom from Conn of the Hundred Battles, so that to this
very day Connacht and Ulster together are called in Irish
Conn's Half, and Munster and Leinster Owen's Half. The
forty-third ancestor is Dergthini, who is known in Irish history
as one of the three heirs of the royal houses in Ireland, whom
I have mentioned before as having been saved from massacre
when the Free Clans or Nobility were cut to pieces by the
Unfree or Rent-paying tribes at Moy Cro — an event which is
nearly contemporaneous with the birth of Christ. Hitherto
there have been nine kings of Munster in this line, but not a
single king of Ireland, but the forty-ninth ancestor, Duach
Dalta Degadh, also called Duach Donn, attains this high
honour, and takes his place among the Reges Hiberniae about
1 72 years before Christ, according to the " Four Masters." After
this a rather bald catalogue of thirty-six more ancestors are
reckoned, no fewer than twenty-four being counted among the
kings of Ireland, and at last, at the eighty-sixth ancestor from
the Earl of Clancarthy, the genealogy finds its long-delayed
goal in Eber, son of Milesius.
It will be seen from this typical pedigree of the Mac Carthys
— any other great family would have answered our purpose just
as well — how families spring from clans and clans from septs — to
use an English word — and septs from a common stem ; and how
the nearness or remoteness of some common ancestor bound a
number of clans in nearer or remoter alliance to one another.
Thus all septs of the great Eberian stem had some slight and
faint tie of common ancestry connecting them, which comes
out most strongly in their jealousy of the Eremonian or northern
stem, but was not sufficient to produce a political alliance
amongst themselves. Of a much stronger nature was the tie
which bound those families descended from Eoghan Mor, the
thirty-eighth ancestor from the first earl. These went under the
name of the Eoghanachts, and held fairly together, always
opposing the Dalcassians, descended from Cas. But when it
came to the adoption of a surname, as it did in the eleventh
64 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
century, those who descended from the ancestor who gave them
their name, were bound to one another by the common ties or
a nearer kinship and a common surname.
It will be seen at a glance from the above pedigree, how,
taking the Mac Carthys as a stem, and starting from the first
earl, the Mac Finneens join that stem at the eleventh ancestor
from the earl, the Mac Auliffes at the fifteenth, the O'Calla-
ghans at the eighteenth, the O'Sullivans at the twenty-ninth,
the O'Keefes at the thirty-second, the O'Dalys x of Munster
at the thirty-second, the O'Donoghues, O'Mahonys,
O'Mullanes, O'Cronins, O'Garvans, and Moriartys at the
thirty-fourth, the O'Donovans, Collinses, O'Meehans,
O'Hehirs, and Mac Davids at the thirty-sixth.
Now each of these had his own genealogy equally carefully
kept by his own ancestral bardic historian. If, for instance,
the Mac Carthys could boast of nine kings of Munster amongst
them, the O'Keefes could boast of ten ; and an O'Keefe
reckoning from Donal Og, who was slain at the battle of
Aughrim, would say that the Mac Carthys joined his line at
the thirty-sixth ancestor from Donal.
All the Gaels of Ireland of the free tribes trace back their
ancestry, as we have seen, to one or other of the four great
stocks of Erimon, Eber, Ir, and Ith. Of these the ERE-
MONIANS were by far the greatest, the EBERIANS coming next.
The O'Neills, O'Donnells, O'Conors, O'Cavanaghs, and
almost all the leading families of the north, the west, and the
east were Erimonian ; the O'Briens, Mac Carthys, and most
of the leading tribes of the south were Eberians.2 It was
1 Not to be confounded with the Siol nDalaigh, who were the great
northern family of the O'Donnells, who had also an ancestor called Dalach,
from whom they derived, not their surname, but their race-patronymic.
2 Strange to say Daniel O'Connell was not an Eberian but an Erimonian.
The history of his tribe is very curious. It was descended from the cele-
brated Ernaan, or Degadian tribe to which the hero Curigh Mac Daire slain
by Cuchulain belonged, who trace their genealogy back to Aengus
Tuirmeach, High-king of Ireland about 388 B.C. These tribes were of
Erimonian descent, but settled in the south. They were quite conquered
TOPOGRAPHY AND GENEALOGY 65
nearly always a member of one or the other of these two stems
who held the high-kingship of Ireland, but so much more
powerful were the Eremonians within historical times, that the
Southern Eberians, although well able to maintain themselves
in the south, yet found themselves absolutely unable to place
more than one or two r high-kings upon the throne of All-
Ireland, from the coming of Patrick, until the great Brian Boru
once more broke the spell and wrested the monarchy from the
Erimonians. The Irians gave few kings to Ireland, and the
Ithians still less — only three or four, and these in very early,
perhaps mythic, times.
If now we trace the O'Neill pedigree back as we did that of
the Mac Carthys, we find the great Shane O'Neill who fought
Elizabeth, traced back step by step to the perfectly historical
character Niall of the Nine Hostages, son of Eochaidh
Muigh-mheadhoin [Mwee-va-on], who was grandson of
Fiachaidh Sreabhtine [Sravtinna], son of Cairbre of the Liffey,
son of the great Cormac Mac Art, and grandson or Conn of the
Hundred Battles, all of whom are celebrated in history and end-
less romance ; and thence through a list containing in all forty-
four High-kings of Ireland back to EREMON, son of Milesius,
brother of that Eber from whom the Mac Carthys spring, and
from whom he is the eighty-eighth in descent. The O'Donnells
join his line at the thirty-sixth ancestor, the O'Gallaghers at
the thirty-second, the O'Conor Don and O'Conor Roe and the
O'Flaherty at the thirty-seventh. We find too, on examining
these pedigrees, the most curious inter-mixtures and crossing
of families. Thus, for instance, the two families of O'Crowley
by the descendants of Oilioll Olum — i.e., the Eberians, who owned nearly
all the south — yet they continued to exist in the extreme west of Munster.
The O'Connells, from whom came Daniel O'Connell, the O'Falveys and
the O' Sheas were their chief families, but none of them were powerful.
1 The Munster annals of Innisfallen themselves claim only five, but the
claims of some of them are untenable. Moore will not admit that any
Eberian was monarch of Ireland from the coming of St. Patrick to the
" usurpation " of Brian Boru.
E
66 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
in Minister spring from the Mac Dermot Roe of Connacht,
who, with the Mac Donogh, sprang from Mac Dermot of
Moylurg in Roscommon, ancestor of the prince of Coolavin ;
while the O'Gara, former lord of Coolavin in the same county,
to whom the " Four Masters " dedicated their annals, was of
southern Eberian stock.
The great warriors of the Red Branch, the men of the
original kingdom of Uladh [Ulla, /.*., Ulster], were of the
third great stock, the IRIANS or race of Ir,1 but they are
perhaps better known as the Clanna Rudhraighe [Rury] or
Rudricians, so named from Rudhraighe, a great monarch of
Ireland who lived nearly three hundred years before Christ, or
as Ulidians because they represented the ancient province of
Uladh. But the Three Collas, grandsons of Cairbre of the
Liffey, who was himself great-grandson of Conn of the Hundred
Battles, and of course of the Eremonian stock, overthrew the
Irians in the year 332, and burned their capital, Emania. The
Irians were thus driven out by the Eremonians, and forced back
into the present counties of Down and Antrim, where they
continued to maintain their independence. So bitterly, how-
ever, did they resent the treatment they had received at the
hands of the Eremonians, and so deeply did the burning of
Emania continue to rankle in their hearts, that after a period of
nearly 900 years they are said to have stood sullenly aloof from
the other Irish, and to have refused to make common cause
with them against the Normans at the battle of Downpatrick
in 1260, where the prince of the O'Neills was slain.2 So
powerful, on the other hand, did the idea of race-connection
remain, that we find one of the bards so late as the sixteenth
* Their greatest families were in later times the Magennises, now Guin-
nesses, O'Mores, O'Farrells, and O'Connor Kerrys, with their correlatives.
2 O'Donovan says that Brian O'Neill was not assisted by any of the
Ulidians at this battle, but of course they had more recent wrongs than the
burning of Emania to complain of, for battles between them and the
invading Eremonian tribes continued for long to be recorded in the
annals. See p. 180, " Miscellany of the Celtic Society."
TOPOGRAPHY AND GENEALOGY 67
century urging a political combination and alliance between
the descendants of the Three Collas who had burned E mania
over twelve hundred years before, and who were then repre-
sented by the Maguires of Fermanagh, the Mac Mahons of
Oriel x and the far-off O'Kellys of Ui Maine2 [Ee maana].
As for the fourth great stock, the ITHIANS,S they were
gradually pushed aside by the Eberians of the south, as the
Irians had been by the Eremonians of the north, and driven
into the islands and coasts of West Munster. Yet curiously
enough the northern Dukes of Argyle and the Campbells and
MacAllans of Scotland spring from them. Their chief tribes
in Ireland were known as the Corca Laidhi [Corka-lee] ; these
were the pirate O'Driscolls and their correlatives, but they
were pushed so hard by the Mac Carthys, O'Mahonys, and
other Eberians, that in the year 1615 their territory was con-
fined to a few parishes, and twenty years later even these are
found paying tribute to the Mac Carthy Reagh. There is one
very remarkable peculiarity about their genealogies, which is,
that, though they trace themselves with great apparent, and no
doubt real, accuracy back to Mac Con, monarch of Ireland and
contemporary with Oilioll Olum in the end of the second
century, yet from that point back to Milesius a great number
of generations (some twenty or so) are missing, and no genea-
logist, so far as I know, in any of the books of pedigrees which
I have consulted, has attempted to supply them by rilling them
up with a barren list of names, as has been done in the other
three stems.4
1 I.e. Monaghan. 2 Parts of the counties Galway and Roscommon.
3 In later times their chief families were the O'Driscolls, the Clancys
[Mac Fhlanchadhas] of the county Leitrim, the Mac Allans of Scotland, the
Coffeys and the O'Learys of Roscarberry, etc. They were commonly
called the Clanna Breogain, or Irish Brigantes, from Breogan, father of Ith.
* From Mac Con, son of Maicniad, king of Ireland, to the end of the
second century, Mac Firbis's great book of genealogies only reckons twelve
generations of Breogan, but in the smaller handwriting at the foot of the
page twenty-two generations are counted up. See under the heading, " Do
genealach Dairfhine agus shil Luighdheach mic lotha Mac Breoghain," at
p. 670 of O'Curry's MS. transcript. Michael O'Clery's great book of
68 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
Let us now consider how far these genealogies tend to
establish the authenticity of our early history, saga, and litera-
ture. The first plain and obvious objection to them is this —
that genealogies which trace themselves back to Adam must
be untrue inventions.
We grant it.
But all Gaelic genealogies meet, as we have shown in
Milesius or his uncle, Ith. Strike off all that long tale or
pre-Milesian names connecting him with Adam, and count
them as a late excrescence — a mixture of pagan myth and
Christian invention added to the rest for show. This leaves
us only the four stems to deal with.
The next objection is that pedigrees which trace themselves
back to the landing of the Milesians — a date in the computation
of which Irish annalists themselves differ by a few hundred
years — must also be untrue, especially as their own annalist,
Tighearnach, has expressly said that all their history prior
to about 300 B.C. is uncertain.
We grant this also.
What, then, remains ?
This remains — namely the points in each of the four great
race stems, in which all or the most of the leading tribes and
families belonging to that stem converge, and, as we have seen,
all of these with a few exceptions take place within reach of
the historical period. In the lines of EBER and of ITH, this
point is at the close of the second century ; in the race of IR
it is about the time of Christ's birth,1 and in the fourth and
genealogies counts twenty-three generations from Maic Niad to Ith, both
included, see p. 223 of O'Clery's MS. Keating's pedigree, as given in
the body of his history, gives twenty-three generations also, but only
seventeen in the special genealogy attached to it. There are no such
curious discrepancies in the other three stems. I can only account for it
by the impoverished and oppressed condition of the Ithians, which in later
times may have made them lose their records .
1 The chief exceptions being, as we have seen, the Scottish Dal Riada
and the Leinster O'Cavanaghs, who do not join the Eremonian line, one
till the fourth and the other till the seventh century before Christ.
TOPOGRAPHY AND GENEALOGY 69
perhaps most important stem, that of EREMON, the two main
points of convergence are in the historical Niall of the Nine
Hostages, who came to the throne in 356, and in Cairbr6 of
the Liffey, who became High-king in 267. x
1 Conall Cearnach, from whom, along with his friend Fergus mac Roigh
or Roy, the Irians claim descent, was first cousin of Cuchulain, and
Tighearnach records Cuchulain's death as occurring in the second year
after the birth of Christ, the " Chronicon Scotorum " having this curious
entry at the year 432, " a morte Concculaind herois usque ad hunc annum
431, a morte Concupair [Conor] mic Nessa 412 anni sunt." It is worth
noting that none of the Gaelic families trace their pedigree, so far as I
know, to either Cuchulain himself, or to his over-lord, King Conor mac
Nessa. Cuchulain was himself not of Ithian but of Eremonian blood,
although so closely connected with Emania, the Red Branch, and the
Clanna Rury. If Irish pedigrees had been like modern ones for sale, or
could in any way have been tampered with, every one would have pre-
ferred Cuchulain for an ancestor. That no one has got him is a strong
presumption in favour of the genuineness of Irish genealogies.
CHAPTER VH
DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE
WE must now consider whether Irish genealogies were really
traced or not to those points which I have mentioned. Is
there any documentary evidence in support of such an asser-
tion ?
There is certainly some such evidence, and we shall proceed
to examine it.
In the Leabhar na h-Uidhre [Lowar na Heera], or Book of
the Dun Cow, the existing manuscript of which was trans-
cribed about the year 1 100, in the Book of Leinster, transcribed
about fifty years later, in the Book of Ballymote and in the
Book of Lecan, frequent reference is made to an ancient book
now lost called the Cin or Codex of Drom-sneachta. This
book, or a copy of it, existed down to the beginning of the
seventeenth century, for Keating quotes from it in his history,
and remarks at the same time, " and it was before the coming
of Patrick to Ireland the author of that book existed." r This
evidence of Keating might be brushed aside as an exaggeration
did it stand alone, but it does not, for in a partially effaced
memorandum in the Book of Leinster, transcribed from older
books about the year 1150, we read: " [Ernin, son of]
1 See Haliday's " Keating," p. 215.
70
DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE 71
Duach,1 son of the king of Connacht, an ollav and a
prophet and a professor in history and a professor in wisdom ;
it was he that collected the genealogies and histories of the
men of Erin into one, and that is the Cin Droma-sneachta."
Now there were only two Duachs according to our annals,
one of these was great-grandson of Niall of the Nine Hostages,
and of course a pagan, who died in 379 ; the other, who was
an ancestor of the O 'Flaherties, died one hundred and twenty
years later. It was Duach the pagan, whose second son was
Ernin ; the other had only one son, whose name was Senach.
If O'Curry has read the half-effaced word correctly, then the
book may have been, as Keating says it was, written before
St. Patrick's coming, and it contained, as the various references
to it show, a repertoire of genealogies collected by the son of a
man who died in 379 ; this man, too, being great-grandson of
that Niall of the Nine Hostages in whose son so large a
number of the Eremonian genealogies converge.2
There are many considerations which lead me to believe
that Irish genealogical books were kept from the earliest intro-
duction of the art of writing, and kept with greater accuracy,
perhaps, than any other records of the past whatsoever. The
chiefest of these is the well-known fact that, under the tribal
system, no one possessed lawfully any portion of the soil in-
habited by his tribe if he were not of the same race with his
chief. Consequently even those of lowest rank in the tribe
traced and recorded their pedigree with as much care as did
the highest, for " it was from his own genealogy each man of
the tribe, poor as well as rich, held the charter of his civil
state, his right of property in the cantred in which he was
1 See p. 15 of O'Curry's MS. Materials. There was some doubt in
his mind about the words in brackets, but as the sheets of his book were
passing through the press he took out the MS. for another look on a par-
ticularly bright day, the result of which left him no doubt that he had read
the name correctly.
2 For 'a typical citation of this book see p. 28 of O'Donovan's " Genealogy
of the Corca Laidh," in the " Miscellany of the Celtic Society."
72 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
born." * All these genealogies were entered in the local books
of each tribe and were preserved in the verses of the hereditary
poets. There was no incentive to action among the early
Irish so stimulative as a remembrance of their pedigree. It
was the same among the Welsh, and probably among all tribes
of Celtic blood. We find the witty but unscrupulous Giraldus,
in the twelfth century, saying of his Welsh countrymen that
every one of them, even of the common people, observes the
genealogy of his race, and not only knows by heart his grand-
fathers and great-grandfathers, but knows all his ancestors
up to the sixth or seventh generation,2 or even still further,
and promptly repeats his genealogy as Rhys, son of Griffith,
son of Rhys, son of Teudor, etc.3
The poet, Cuan O'Lochain, who died in the year 1024,
gives a long account of the Saltair of Tara now lost, the com-
pilation of which he ascribes to Cormac mac Art, who came
to the throne in 227,4 and in which he says the synchronisms
and chronology of all the kings were written. The Book of
Ballymote too quotes from an ancient book, now lost, called
the Book of the Uachongbhail, to the effect that " the syn-
chronisms and genealogies and succession of their kings and
monarchs, their battles, their contests, and their antiquities
1 See " Celtic Miscellany," p. 144, O'Donovan's tract on Corca Laidb.
2 " Generositatem vero et generis nobilitatem prae rebus omnibus magis
appetunt. Unde et generosa conjugia plus longe capiunt quam sumptuosa
vel opima. Genealogiam quoque generis sui etiam de populo quilibet
observat, et .non solum, avos, atavos, sed usque ad sextam vel septimam et
ultra procul generationem, memoriter et prompte genus enarrat in hunc
modum Resus filius Griffini filii Resi filii Theodori, filii Aeneae, filii Hoeli
filii Cadelli filii Roderici magni et sic deinceps.
"Genus itaque super omnia diligunt, et darana sanguinis atque dedecoris
ulciscuntur. Vindicis enim animi sunt et irae cruentse nee solum novas
et recentes injurias verum etiam veteres et antiquas velut instanter vindicare
parati " (" Cambrise Descriptio," Cap. XVII.).
3 O'Donovan says — I forget where — that he had tested in every part of
Ireland how far the popular memory could carry back its ancestors, and
found that it did not reach beyond the seventh generation.
* According to the " Four Masters " ; in 213, according to Keating.
DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE 73
from the world's beginning down to that time were written in
it, and this is the Saltair of Tara, which is the origin and
fountain of the historians of Erin from that period down to
this time." This may not be convincing proof that Cormac
mac Art wrote the Saltair, but it is convincing proof that
what were counted as the very earliest books were filled with
genealogies.
The subject of tribal genealogy upon which the whole
social fabric depended was far too important to be left without
a check in the hands of tribal historians, however well-
iritentioned. And this check was afforded by the great
convention or Feis, which took place triennially at Tara,1
whither the historians had to bring their books that under
the scrutiny of the jealous eyes of rivals they might be purged
of whatever could not be substantiated, " and neither law nor
usage nor historic record was ever held as genuine until it had
received such approval, and nothing that disagreed with the
Roll of Tara could be respected as truth."2
" It was," says Duald Mac FirbisS — himself the author of
probably the greatest book of genealogies ever written, speak-
ing about the chief tribal historians of Ireland, " obligatory on
every one of them who followed it to purify the profession " ;
and he adds very significantly, " Along with these [historians]
the judges of Banba [Ireland] used to be in like manner pre-
serving the history, for a man could not be a judge without being
a historian^ and he is not a historian who is not a judge in the
BRETHADH NiMHEDH,4 that is the last book in the study of
the Shanachies and of the judges themselves."
1 But see O'Donovan's introduction to " The Book of Rights," where he
adduces some reasons for believing that it may have been a septennial not
a triennial convocation.
2 See Keating's History under the reign of Tuathal Teachtmhar.
3 In the seventeenth century. His book on genealogies would, O' Curry
computed, fill 1,300 pages of the size of O'Donovan's " Four Masters."
4 This was a very ancient law book, which is quoted at least a dozen
times in Cormac's Glossary, made in the ninth or tenth century.
74 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
The poets and historians " were obliged to be free from
theft, and killing, and satirising, and adultery, and everything
that would be a reproach to their learning." Mac Firbis, who
was the last working historian of a great professional family,
puts the matter nobly and well.
" Any Shanachie," he says, " whether an ollav or the next in rank,
or belonging to the order at all, who did not preserve these rules,
lost half his income and his dignity according to law, and was
subject to heavy penalties besides, so that it is not to be supposed
that there is in the world a person who would not prefer to tell the
truth, if he had no other reason than the fear of God and the loss of
his dignity and his income : and it is not becoming to charge
partiality upon these elected historians [of the nation]. However, if
unworthy people did write falsehood, and attributed it to a historian,
it might become a reproach to the order of historians if they were
not on their guard, and did not look to see whether it was out of
their prime books of authority that those writers obtained their
knowledge. And that is what should be done by every one, both by
the lay scholar and the professional historian — everything of which
they have a suspicion, to look for it, and if they do not find it con-
firmed in good books, to note down its doubtfulness,1 along with it,
as I myself do to certain races hereafter in this book, and it is thus
that the historians are freed from the errors of others, should these
errors be attributed to them, which God forbid."
I consider it next to impossible for any Gaelic pedigree to
have been materially tampered with from the introduction of
the art of writing, because tribal jealousies alone would have
prevented it, and because each stem of the four races was
connected at some point with every other stem, the whole
clan system being inextricably intertwined, and it was neces-
sary for all the various tribal genealogies to agree, in order that
each branch, sub-branch, and family might fit, each in its own
place.
I have little doubt that the genealogy of O'Neill, for
instance, which traces him back to the father of Niall of the
1 Thus quaintly expressed in the original, for which see O'Curry's
MS. Materials, p. 576 : " muna ffaghuid dearbhtha iar ndeghleabhraibh
e, a chuntabhairt fen do chur re a chois."
DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE 75
Nine Hostages who came to the throne in 356 is substantially
correct. Niall, it must be remembered, was father of Lao-
ghaire [Leary], who was king when St. Patrick arrived, by
which time, if not before, the art of writing was known in
Ireland. A fortiori^ then, we may trust the pedigrees of the
O'Donnells and the rest who join that stem a little later on.
If this be acknowledged we may make a cautious step or two
backwards. No one, so far as I know, has much hesitation in
acknowledging the historic character of that King Laoghaire
whom St. Patrick confronted, nor of his father Niall of the
Nine Hostages. But if we go so far, it wants very little to
bring us in among the Fenians themselves, and the scenes con-
nected with them and with Conn of the Hundred Battles ; for
Niall's great-grandfather was that Fiachaidh who was slain
by the Three Collas — those who burnt Emania and destroyed
the Red Branch — and his father is Cairbre of the Liffey, who
overthrew the Fenians, and his father again is the great Cormac
son of Art, son of Conn of the Hundred Battles who divided
the kingdom with Owen M6r. But it is from the three
grandsons of this Owen M6r the Eberians come, and from
their half-brother come the Ithians, so that up to this point
I think Irish genealogies may be in the main accepted. Even
the O'Kavanaghs and their other correlations, who do not join
the stem of Eremon till between 500 or 600 years before
Christ, yet pass through Enna Cennsalach, king of Leinster,
a perfectly historical character mentioned several times in the
Book of Armagh,1 who slew the father of Niall of the Nine
Hostages ; and I believe that, however we may account for the
strange fact that these septs join the Eremonian stem so many
hundreds of years before the O'Neills and the others, that up
to this point their genealogy too may be trusted.
1 See pp. 102, 113 of Father Hogan's " Documenta de S. Patricio ex
Libro Armachano," where he is called Endae. He persecuted Cuthbad's
three sons, " fosocart endae cennsalach fubithin creitme riacach," but
Patrick is said to have baptized his son, "Luid iarsuidiu cucrimthan
maccnendi ceinnselich et ipse creditit."
;6 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
If this is the case, and if it is true that every Gael belonging
to the Free Clans of Ireland could trace his pedigree with
accuracy back to the fourth, third, or even second century, it
affords a strong support to Irish history, and in my opinion
considerably heightens the credibility of our early annals, and
renders the probability that Finn mac Cool and the Red
Branch heroes were real flesh and blood, enormously greater
than before. It will also put us on our guard against quite
accepting such sweeping generalisations as those of Skene,
when he says that the entire legendary history of Ireland
prior to the establishment of Christianity in the fifth century
partakes largely of a purely artificial character. We must not
forget that while no Irish genealogy is traced to the De Danann
tribes, who were undoubtedly gods, yet the ancestor of the
Dalcassians — Cormac Cas, Oilioll Olum's son — is said to have
married Ossian's daughter.
CHAPTER VIII
m
CONFUSION BETWEEN GODS AND MEN
OF that part of every Irish pedigree which runs back from the
first century to Milesius nothing can be laid down with
certainty, nor indeed can there be any absolute certainty in
affirming that Irish pedigrees from the eleventh to the third
century are reliable — we have only an amount of cumulative
evidence from which we may draw such a deduction with
considerable confidence. The mere fact that these pedigrees
are traced back a thousand years further through Irish kings
and heroes, and end in a son of Milesius, need not in the
least affect — as in popular estimation it too often does — the
credibility of the last seventeen hundred years, which stands
upon its own merits.
On the contrary, such a continuation is just what we should
expect. In the Irish genealogies the sons of Milesius occupy
the place that in other early genealogies is held by the gods.
And the sons of Milesius were possibly the tutelary gods of
the Gael. We have seen how one of them was so, at least
in folk belief, and was addressed in semi -seriousness as still
living and reigning even in the last century.
All the Germanic races looked upon themselves as descended
from gods. The Saxon, Anglian, Danish, Norwegian, and
77
78 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
Swedish kings were traced back either to Woden or to some
of his companions or sons.1 It was the same with the Greeks,
to whom the Celts bear so close a similitude. Their Hera-
kleids, Asklepiads, ./Eakids, Neleids, and Daedalids, are a close
counterpart to our Eremonians, Eberians, Ithians, and Irians,
and in each case all the importance was attached to the
primitive eponymous hero or god from whom they sprang.
Without him the whole pedigree became uninteresting, un-
finished, headless. These beliefs exercised full power even
upon the ablest and most cultured Greeks. Aristotle and
Hippocrates, for instance, considered themselves descended from
Asklepius, Thucidydes from ./Eakus, and Socrates from
Daedalus ; just as O'Neill and O'Donnell did from Eremon,
O'Brien from Eber, and Magennis from Ir. It was to the
divine or heroic fountain heads of the race, not so much as to
the long and mostly barren list of names which led up to it,
that the real importance was attached. It is not in Ireland
alone that we see mythology condensing into a dated
genealogy. The same thing has happened in Persian history,
and the history of Denmark by Saxo Grammaticus affords
many such instances. In Greece the Neleid family of Pylus
traced their origin to Neptune, the Lacedaemonian kings traced
theirs to Cadmus and Danaiis, and Hekataeus of Miletus was
the fifteenth descendant of a god.
Again we meet with in Teutonic and Hellenic mythology
the same difficulty that meets us in our own — that of distin-
guishing gods from heroes and heroes from men. The legends
of the Dagda and of Angus of the Boyne and the Tuatha
De Danann, of Tighearnmas and the Fomorians, of Lugh the
Long-handed and the children of Tuireann — all evidently
mythologic — were treated in the same manner, recited by the
same tongues, and regarded with the same unwavering belief,
as the history of Conor mac Nessa and Deirdre, of Cuchulain
1 These genealogies were in later times, like the Irish ones, extended to
N6ah.
CONFUSION BETWEEN GODS AND MEN 79
and Meve, or that of Conn of the Hundred Battles, Owen
Mor, Finn mac Cool, and the Fenians. The early Greek,
in the same way, treated the stories of Apollo and Artemis, of
Ares and Aphrodite, just as he did those of Diomede and
Helen, Meleager and Althasa, Achilles, or the voyage of the
Argo. All were in a primitive and uncritical age received
with the same unsuspicious credulity, and there was no hard-
and-fast line drawn between gods and men. Just as the M6r-
rfgan, the war-goddess, has her eye dashed out by Cuchulain,
so do we find in Homer gods wounded by heroes. Thus, too,
Apollo is condemned to serve Admetus, and Hercules is sold
as a slave to Omphale. Herodotus himself confesses that he
is unable to determine whether a certain Thracian god
Zalmoxis, was a god or a man,1 and he finds the same difficulty
regarding Dionysus and Pan ; while Plutarch refuses to deter-
mine whether Janus was a god or a king ; 2 and Herakleitus
the philosopher, confronted by the same difficulty, made the
admirable mot that men were " mortal gods," gods were " im-
mortal men." 3
In our literature, although the fact does not always appear
distinctly, the Dagda, Angus Og, Lugh the Long-handed,
Ogma, and their fellows are the equivalents of the immortal
gods, while certainly Cuchulain and Conor and probably
Curigh Mac Daire, Conall Cearnach, and the other famous
Red Branch chiefs, whatever they may have been in reality,
are the equivalent of the Homeric heroes, that is to say,
believed to have been epigoni of the gods, and therefore greater
1 Herod, iv. 94-96. 2 Numa, ch. xix.
3 " 9eot OvijToi," " avOpwTToi aOdvaroi." It is most curious to find this so
academic question dragged into the hard light of day and subjected to the
scrutiny of so prosaic a person as the Roman tax-collector. Under the
Roman Empire all lands in Greece belonging to the immortal gods were
exempted from tribute, and the Roman tax-collector refused to recognise
as immortal gods any deities who had once been men. The confusion
arising from such questions offered an admirable target to Lucian for his
keenest shafts of ridicule.
8o LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
than ordinary human beings ; while just as in Greek story
there are the cycles of the war round Thebes, the voyage of
the drgOy the fate of CEdipus, etc., so we have in Irish
numerous smaller groups of epic stories — now unfortunately
mostly lost or preserved in digests — which, leaving out the
Cuchulain and Fenian cycles, centre round such minor cha-
racters as Macha, who founded Emania, Leary Lore, Labhraidh
[Lowry] the Mariner, and others.
That the Irish gods die in both saga and annals like so many
human beings, in no wise militates against the supposition of
their godhead. Even the Greek did not always consider his gods
as eternal. A study of comparative mythology teaches that gods
are in their original essence magnified men, and subject to all
men's changes and chances. They are begotten and born
like men. They eat, sleep, feel sickness, sorrow, pain, like
men. "Like men," says Grimm, "they speak a language,
feel passions, transact affairs, are clothed and armed, possess
dwellings and utensils." Being man-like in these things, they
are also man-like in their deaths. They are only on a greater
scale than we. " This appears to me," says Grimm,1 " a
fundamental feature in the faith of the heathen, that they
allowed to their gods not an unlimited and unconditional
duration, but only a term of life far exceeding that of man."
As their shape is like the shape of man only vaster, so are
their lives like the lives of men only indefinitely longer. "With
our ancestors [the Teutons]," said Grimm, "the thought of
the gods being immortal retires into the background. The
Edda never calls them * eylifir ' or c odauSligir,' and their
death is spoken of without disguise." So is it with us also.
The Dagda dies, slain in the battle of North Moytura ; the
three " gods of the De Danann " die at the instigation or
Lugh ; and the great Lugh himself, from whom Lugdunum,
now Lyons, takes its name, and to whom early Celtic
inscriptions are found, shares the same fate. Manannan is
1 " Deutsche Mythologie," article on the Condition of the Gods.
CONFUSION BETWEEN GODS AND MEN Si
slain, so is Ogma, and so are many more. And yet though
recorded as slain they do not wholly disappear. Manannan
came back to Bran riding in his chariot across the Ocean,1
and Lugh makes his frequent appearances amongst the
living.
1 " Voyage of Bran mac Febail," Nutt and Kuno Meyer, vol. i. p. 16.
CHAPTER IX
DRUIDISM
ALTHOUGH Irish literature is full of allusions to the druids it
is extremely difficult to know with any exactness what they
were. They are mentioned from the earliest times. The pre-
Milesian races, the Nemedians and Fomorians, had their
druids, who worked mutual spells against each other. The
Tuatha De Danann had innumerable druids amongst them,
who used magic. The invading Milesians had three druids
with them in their ships, Amergin the poet and two others.
In fact, druids are mentioned in connection with all early
Irish fiction and history, from the first colonising of Ireland
down to the time of the saints. It seems very doubtful,
however, whether there existed in Ireland as definitely estab-
lished an order of druids as in Britain and on the Continent.1
1 Caesar's words are worth repeating. He says that there were two
sorts of men in Gaul both numerous and honoured — the knights and the
Druids, " equites et druides," because the people counted for nothing and
took the initiative in nothing. As for the Druids, he says : " Rebus divinis
intersunt, sacrificia publica et privata procurant, religiones interpretantur.
. . . nam fere de omnibus controversiis publicis privatisque constituunt,
et si quod est admissum facinus, si ccedes facta, si de hereditate, de finibus
controversia est iidem decernunt prsemia, pcenasque constituunt." All
this seems very like the duties of the Irish Druids, but not what follows :
" si qui, aut privatus aut populus eorum decreto non stetit, sacrificiis inter-
DRUIDISM 83
They are frequently mentioned in Irish literature as ambas-
sadors, spokesmen, teachers, and tutors. Kings were sometimes
druids, so were poets. It is a word which seems to me to have
been, perhaps from the first, used with great laxity and great lati-
tude. The druids, so far as we can ascertain, do not seem to be
connected with any positive rites or worship ; still less do they
appear to have been a regular priesthood, and there is not a
shadow of evidence to connect them with any special worship
as that of the sun or of fire. In the oldest saga-cycle the
druid appears as a man of the highest rank and related to
kings. King Conor's father was according to some — pro-
bably the oldest — accounts a druid ; so was Finn mac Cool's
grandfather.
Before the coming of St. Patrick there certainly existed
images, or, as they are called by the ancient authorities,
" idols " in Ireland, at which or to which sacrifice used to be
offered, probably with a view to propitiating the earth-gods,
possibly the Tuatha De Danann, and securing good harvests
and abundant kine. From sacrificial rites spring, almost of
necessity, a sacrificial caste, and this caste — the druids — had
arrived at a high state of organisation in Gaul and Britain
when observed by Caesar, and did not hesitate to sacrifice whole
hecatombs of human beings. " They think," said Caesar,
" that unless a man's life is rendered up for a man's life, the
will of the immortal God cannot be satisfied, and they have
sacrifices of this kind as a national institution."
There appears nothing, however, that I am aware of, to
connect the druids in Ireland with human sacrifice, although
such sacrifice appears to have been offered. The druids, how-
ever, appear to have had private idols of their own. We find
a very minute account in the tenth-century glossary of King
Cormac as to how a poet performed incantations with his
dicunt. Hasc poena apud eos est gravissima." Nor do the Irish appear
to have had the over-Druid whom Caesar talks of. (See " De Bello Gallico,"
book vi. chaps. 13, 14).
84 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
idols. The word " poet " is here apparently equivalent to
druid, as the word " druid " like the Latin vates is frequently
a synonym for " poet." Here is how the glossary explains the
incantation called Imbas Forosnai : —
"This," says the ancient lexicographer, "describes to the poet
whatsoever thing he wishes to discover,1 and this is the manner in
which it is performed. The poet chews a bit of the raw red flesh
of a pig, a dog, or a cat, and then retires with it to his own bed
behind the door,2 where he pronounces an oration over it and
offers it to his idol gods. He then invokes the idols, and if he has not
received the illumination before the next day, he pronounces incan-
tations upon his two palms and takes his idol gods unto him [into
his bed] in order that he may not be interrupted in his sleep. He
then places his two hands upon his two cheeks and falls asleep. He
is then watched so that he be not stirred nor interrupted by any one
until everything that he seeks be revealed to him at the end of a
nomad,3 or two or three, or as long as he continues at his offering,
and hence it is that this ceremony is called Imbas, that is, the two
hands upon him crosswise, that is, a hand over and a hand hither
upon his cheeks. And St. Patrick prohibited this ceremony, because
it is a species of Teinm Laeghdha,4 that is, he declared that any one
who performed it should have no place in heaven or on earth."
These were apparently the private images of the druid
himself which are spoken of, but there certainly existed public
idols in pagan Ireland before the evangelisation of the island.
St. Patrick himself, in his u Confession," asserts that before his
coming the Irish worshipped idols — idola et immunda — and we
have preserved to us more than one account of the great gold-
covered image which was set up in Moy Slaught 5 [/.*., the
1 " Cach raet bid maith lasin filid agus bud adla(i)c do do fhaillsiugad."
a Thus O'Curry (" Miscellany of the Celtic Society," vol. ii. p. 208) ;
but Stokes translates, " he puts it then on the flagstone behind the door."
See the original in Cormac's Glossary under " Himbas." I have not
O'Donovan's translation by me.
3 O'Curry translates this by " day." It is at present curiously used, I sup-
pose by a kind of confusion with the English "moment," in the sense of a
minute or other short measure of time. At least I have often heard it so used.
4 Another species of incantation mentioned in the glossary,
s In Irish Magh Sleacht.
DRUIDISM 85
Plain of Adoration], believed to be in the present county of
Cavan. It stood there surrounded by twelve lesser idols orna-
mented with brass, and may possibly have been regarded as a
sun-god ruling over the twelve seasons. It was called the
Crom Cruach or Cenn Cruach,1 and certain Irish tribes con-
sidered it their special tutelary deity. The Dinnseanchas, or
explanation of the name of Moy Slaught, calls it " the King
Idol of Erin," "and around him were twelve idols made
of stones, but he was of gold. Until Patrick's advent he was
the god of every folk that colonised Ireland. To him they
used to offer the firstlings of every issue and the chief scions
of every clan ; " and the ancient poem in the Book of Leinster
declares that it was " a high idol with many fights, which was
named the Cromm Cruaich." 2
The poem tells us that " the brave Gaels used to worship it,
and would never ask from it satisfaction as to their portion of
the hard world without paying it tribute."
1 In O'Donovan's fragmentary manuscript catalogue of the Irish MSS.,
in Trinity College, Dublin, he writes apropos of the life of St. Maedhog or
Mogue, contained in H. 2, 6 : "I searched the two Brefneys for the
situation of Moy Sleacht on which stood the chief pagan Irish idol Crom
Cruach, but have failed, being misled by Lanigan, who had been misled by
Seward, who had been blinded by the impostor Beauford, who placed
this plain in the county of Leitrim. It can, however, be proved from this
life of St. Mogue that Magh Sleacht was that level part of the Barony of
Tullaghan (in the county of Cavan) in which the island of Inis Breaghwee
(now Mogue's Island), the church of Templeport, and the little village
of Ballymagauran are situated." I have been told that O'Donovan
afterwards found reason to doubt the correctness of this identifica-
tion.
2 M. de Jubainville connects the name with cru (Latin, cruor), " blood,"
translating Cenn Cruach by tete sanglante and Crom Cruach by Courbe
sanglante, or Croissant ensanglante ; but Rhys connects it with Cruach,
" a reek " or " mound," as in Croagh-Patrick, St. Patrick's Reek. Cenn
Cruach is evidently the same name as the Roman station Penno-Crucium,
in the present county of Stafford, the Irish " c " being as usual the equivalent
of the British " p." This would make it appear that Cromm was no local
idol. Rhys thinks it got its name Crom Cruach, " the stooped one of the
mound," from its bent attitude in the days of its decadence.
86 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
" He was their God,1
The withered Cromm with many mists,
The people whom he shook over every harbour,
The everlasting kingdom they shall not have.
To him without glory
Would they kill their piteous wailing offspring,
With much wailing and peril
To pour their blood around Cromm Cruaich.
Milk and corn
They would ask from him speedily
In return for one-third of their healthy issue,
Great was the horror and scare of him.
To him
Noble Gaels would prostrate themselves,
From the worship of him, with many manslaughters
The Plain is called Moy Sleacht.
In their ranks (stood)
Four times three stone idols
To bitterly beguile the hosts,
The figure of Cromm was made of gold.
Since the rule
Of Hercmon,2 the noble man of grace,
There was worshipping of stones
Until the coming of good Patrick of Macha [Ardmagh]."
There is not the slightest reason to distrust this evidence as
far as the existence of Crom Cruach goes.
1 Observe the exquisite and complicated metre of this in the original,
a proof, I think, that the lines are not very ancient. It has been edited
from the Book of Leinster, Book of Ballymote, Book of Lecan, and Rennes
MS., at vol. i. p. 301 of Mr. Nutt's "Voyage of Bran," by Dr. Kuno Meyer—
^
In Cromm Crin co n-immud da
In lucht ro Craith 6s each Cuan
In flaithius Euan nochos Bia."
2 I.e., Eremon or Erimon, Son of Milesius, see above, p. 59.
DRUIDISM 87
" This particular tradition," says Mr. Nutt, " like the majority of
those contained in it [the Dinnseanchas] must be of pre-Christian
origin. It would have been quite impossible for a Christian monk
to have invented such a story, and we may accept it as a perfectly
genuine bit of information respecting the ritual side of insular Celtic
religion." *
St. Patrick overthrew this idol, according both to the poem
in the Book of Leinster and the early lives of the saint.
The life says that when St. Patrick cursed Crom the ground
opened and swallowed up the twelve lesser idols as far as their
heads, which, as Rhys acutely observes, shows that when the
early Irish lives of the saint were written the pagan sanctuary
had so fallen into decay, that only the heads of the lesser idols
remained above ground, while he thinks that it was at this
time from its bent attitude and decayed appearance the idol
was called Crom, "the Stooper."2 There is, however, no
1 The details of this idol, and, above all, the connection in which it stands
to the mythic culture-king Tighearnmas, could not, as Mr. Nutt well
remarks, have been invented by a Christian monk ; but nothing is more
likely, it appears to me, than that such a one, familiar with the idol rites
of Judaea from the Old Testament, may have added the embellishing trait
of the sacrifice of "the firstlings of every issue."
3 Sir Samuel Ferguson's admirable poem upon the death of Cormac
refers to the priests of the idol, but there is no recorded evidence of any
such priesthood —
" Crom Cruach and his sub-gods twelve,
Saith Cormac, are but carven treene,
The axe that made them haft or helve,
Had worthier of your worship been.
But he who made the tree to grow,
And hid in earth the iron stone,
And made the man with mind to know
The axe's use is God alone.
Anon to priests of Crom -were brought —
Where girded in their service dread,
They ministered in red Moy Slaught —
Word of the words King Cormac said.
They loosed their curse against the king,
They cursed him in his flesh and bones,
And daily in their mystic ring
They turned the maledictive stones."
88 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
apparent or recorded connection between this idol and the
druids, nor do the druids appear to have fulfilled the functions
of a public priesthood in Ireland, and the Introduction to the
Seanchas Mor, or ancient Book of the Brehon Laws, distinctly
says that, "until Patrick came only three classes of persons
were permitted to speak in public in Erin, a chronicler to
relate events and to tell stories, a poet to eulogise and to
satirise, and a Brehon to pass sentence from precedents and
commentaries," thus noticeably omitting all mention of the
druids as a public body.
The idol Crom with his twelve subordinates may very well
have represented the sun, upon whom both season and crops
and consequently the life both of man and beast depend. The
gods to whom the early Irish seem to have sacrificed, were no
doubt, as I think Mr. Nutt has shown, agricultural powers,
the lords of life and growth, and with these the sun, who is at
the root of all growth, was intimately connected, u the object of
that worship was to promote increase, the theory of worship was
— life for life." * That the Irish swore by the sun and the moon
and the elements is certain ; the oath is quoted in many places,2
D'Arcy McGee also refers to Crom Cruach in terms almost equally
poetic, but equally unauthorised : —
" Their ocean-god was Manannan Mac Lir,
Whose angry lips
In their white foam full often would inter
Whole fleets of ships.
Crom was their day-god and their thundcret,
Made morning and eclipse ;
Bride was their queen of song, and unto her
They prayed with fire-touched lips ! "
1 Nutt's " Voyage of Bran," vol. ii. p. 250.
2 The elements are recorded as having slain King Laoghaire because he
broke the oath he had made by them. In the Lament for Patrick Sarsfield
as late as the seventeenth century, the unknown poet cries :
" Go mbeannaigh' an ghealach gheal 's an ghrian duit,
O thug tu an la as laimh Righ 'Liam leat."
I.e., May the white Moon and the Sun bless you, since thou hast taken
the Day out of the hand of King William.
DRUID ISM 89
and St. Patrick appears to allude to sun-worship in that passage
of his " Confession," where he says, " that sun which we see
rising daily at His bidding for our sake, it will never reign,
and its splendour will not last for ever, but those who adore it
will perish miserably for all eternity : " this is also borne out
by the passage in Cormac's Glossary of the images the pagans
used to adore, " as, for instance, the form or figure of the sun
on the altar." *
Another phase of the druidic character seems to have been
that he was looked upon as an intermediary between man and
the invisible powers. In the story which tells us how Midir
the De Danann, carries off the king's wife, we are informed
that the druid's counsel is sought as to how to recover her,
which he at last is enabled to do " through his keys of science
and Ogam," after a year's searching.
The druids are represented as carrying wands of yew, but
there is nothing in Irish literature, so far as I am aware of,
about their connection with the oak, from the Greek for
which, S/oucy2 they are popularly supposed to derive their
name. They used to be consulted as soothsayers upon the
probable success of expeditions, as by Cormac mac Art, when
he was thinking about extorting a double tribute from
Munster,3 and by Dathi, the last pagan king of Ireland, when
And a little later we find the harper Carolan swearing " by the light of
the sun."
" Molann gach aon an te bhios craibhtheach coir,
Agus molann gach aon an te bhios pairteach leo,
Dar solas na greine se mo radh go deo
Go molfad gan speis gan bhreig an t-ath mar geobhad."
1 See above, p. 55, note.
2 The genitive of drai, the modern draoi (dhree) is druad, from whence
no doubt the Latin druidis. It was Pliny who first derived the name from
SpvQ. The word with a somewhat altered meaning was in use till recently.
The wise men from the East are called druids (draoithe) in O'Donnell's
translation of the New Testament. The modern word for enchantment
(draoidheacht} is literally "druidism," but an enchanter is usually
draoidheadoir, a derivation from draoi.
3 See above, p. 29, note 2.
90 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
setting out upon his expedition abroad ; they took auguries by
birds, they could cause magic showers and fires, they observed
stars and clouds, they told lucky days,1 they had ordeals of their
own,2 but, above all, they appear to have been tutors or teachers.
Another druidic practice which is mentioned in Cormac's
Glossary is more fully treated of by Keating, in his account
of the great pagan convention at Uisneach, a hill in Meath,
"where the men of Ireland were wont to exchange their
goods and their wares and other jewels." This convention
was held in the month of May,
"And at it they were wont to make a sacrifice to the arch-god,
whom they adored, whose name was Bel. It was likewise their
usage to light two fires to Bel in every district in Ireland at this
season, and to drive a pair of each herd of cattle that the district
contained between these two fires, as a preservative, to guard them
against all the diseases of that year. It is from that fire thus made
that the day on which the noble feast of the apostles Peter and
James is held has been called Bealtaine [in Scotch Beltane], i.e.,
Bel's fire."
Cormac, however, says nothing about a god named Bel — who,
indeed, is only once mentioned elsewhere, so far as I know 3 —
but explains the name as if it were Bil-tene, "goodly fire,"
from the fires which the druids made on that day through
which to drive the cattle.4
1 Cathbad, Conor mac Nessa's Druid, foretold that any one who took
arms — the Irish equivalent for knighthood — upon a certain day, would
become famous for 'ever, but would enjoy only a brief life. It was
Cuchulain who assumed arms upon that day.
2 O'Curry quotes a druidic ordeal from the MS. marked H. 3. 17 in
Trinity College, Dublin. A woman to clear her character has to rub her
tongue to a red-hot adze of bronze, which had been heated in a fire of
blackthorn or rowan-tree.
3 " Revue Celt.," vol. ii. p. 443. Is Bel to be equated with what Rhys
calls in one place " the chthonian divinity Beli the Great," of the Britons,
and in another " Beli the Great, the god of death and darkness " ? (See
"Hibbert Lectures," pp. 168 and 274.)
4 The Christian priests, apparently unable to abolish these cattle
ceremonies, took the harm out of them by transferring them to St. John's
DRUID ISM 91
Post-Christian accounts of the druids as a whole, and or
individual druids differ widely. The notes on St. Patrick,
in the Book of Armagh, present them in the worst
possible light as wicked wizards and augurs and people of
incantations,1 and the Latin lives of the Saints nearly always
call them "magi." Yet they are admitted to have been able
to prophecy. King Laoghaire's [Leary's] druids prophesied
to him three years before the arrival of Patrick that " adze-heads
would come over a furious sea,
" Their mantles hole-headed,
Their staves crook-headed,
Their tables in the east of their houses." a
In the lives of the early saints we find some of them on
fair terms with the druids. Columcille's first teacher was a
druid, whom his mother consulted about him. It is true that
in the Lismore text he is called not a druid but a faldh^ i.e.)
•vates or prophet, but this only confirms the close connection
between druid, prophet, and teacher, for his proceedings are
distinctly druidical, the account runs : " Now when the time
for reading came to him the cleric went to a certain prophet
Eve, the 24th of June, where they are still observed in most districts of
Ireland, and large fires built with bones in them, and occasionally cattle
are driven through them or people leap over them. The cattle were pro-
bably driven through the fire as a kind of substitute for their sacrifice,
and the bones burnt in the fire are probably a substitute for the bones
of the cattle that should have been offered up. Hence the fires are
called "teine cnamh" (bone-fire) in Irish, and bone-fire (not bonfire) in
English.
1 St. Patrick is there stated to have found around the king " scivos et
magos et auruspices, incantatores et omnis malse artis inventores."
2 This means tonsured men, with cowls, with pastoral staves, with
altars in the east end of the churches. The ancient Irish rann is very
curious :—
" Ticcat Tailcinn
Tar muir meirceann,
A mbruit toillceann.
A crainn croimceann.
A miasa n-airrter tige
Friscerat uile amen."
92 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
who abode in the land to ask him when the boy ought to
begin. When the prophet had scanned the sky, he said ' Write
an alphabet for him now.' The alphabet was written on a
cake, and Columcille consumed the cake in this wise, half to
the east of a water, and half to the west of a water. Said the
prophet through grace of prophecy, ' So shall this child's
territory be, half to the east of the sea, and half to the west of
the sea.'" x Columcille himself is said to have composed a
poem beginning, " My Druid is the son of God." Another
druid prophesies of St. Brigit before she was born,2 and other
instances connecting the early saints with druids are to be
found in their lives, which at least show that there existed
a sufficient number of persons in early Christian Ireland who
did not consider the druids wholly bad, but believed that
they could prophecy, at least in the interests of the saints.
From what we have said, it is evident that there were
always druids in Ireland, and that they were personages of
great importance. But it is not clear that they were an
organised body like the druids of Gaul,3 or like the Bardic
body in later times in Ireland, nor is it clear what their exact
functions were, but they seem to have been teachers above
everything else. It is clear, too, that the ancient Irish — at
least in some cases — possessed and worshipped images. That
they sacrificed to them, and even offered up human beings, is
by no means so certain, the evidence for this resting upon the
single passage in the Dinnseanchas, and the poem (in a modern
style of metre) in the Book of Leinster, which we have just
given, and which though it is evidence for the existence of the
idol Crom Cruach, known to us already from other sources,
may possibly have had the trait of human sacrifice added as a
heightening touch by a Christian chronicler familiar with the
1 I.e., one half in Ireland, the other in Scotland, alluding to his work at
lona and among the Picts.
2 Stokes, " Lives of the Saints, from the Book of Lismore," p. 183.
3 Who were, according to Ammianus Marcellinus, quoting the Greek
historian, Timagenes, " sodaliciis adstricti consortiis."
DRUIDISM 93
accounts of Moloch and Ashtaroth. The complete silence
which, outside of these passages,1 exists in all Irish literature
as to a proceeding so terrifying to the popular imagination,
seems to me a proof that if human sacrifice was ever resorted
to at all, it had fallen into abeyance before the landing; of
the Christian missionaries.
1 There is one other instance of human sacrifice mentioned in the Book
of Ballymote, but this is recorded in connection with funeral games, and
appears to have been an isolated piece of barbarity performed " that it
might be a reproach to the Momonians for ever, and that it might be a
trophy over them." Fiachra, a brother of Niall of the Nine Hostages, in
the fourth century, carried off fifty hostages from Munster, and dying of
his wounds, the hostages were buried alive with him, round his grave :
"ro hadnaicead na geill tucadh a neass ocus siad beo im fheart Fiachra
comba hail for Mumain do gres, ocus comba comrama forra." For
another allusion to " human sacrifice " see O' Curry's " Manners and
Customs," vol. i. p. dcxli and cccxxxiii. The " Dinnseanchas," quoted
from above, is a topographical work explaining the origin of Irish place-
names, and attributed to Amergin mac Amhalgaidh, poet to King Diarmuid
mac Cearbaill, who lived in the sixth century. "There seems no reason, "says
Dr. Atkinson, in his preface to the facsimile Book of Leinster, " for disputing
his claims to be regarded as the original compiler of a work of a similar
character — the original nucleus is not now determinable." The oldest
copy is the Book of Leinster and treats of nearly two hundred places and
contains eighty-eight poems. The copy in the Book of Ballymote contains
one hundred and thirty-nine, and that in the Book of Lecan even more.
The total number of all the poems contained in the different copies is
close on one hundred and seventy. The copy in the Bodleian Library
was published by Whitley Stokes in " Folk-lore," December, 1892, and
that in the Advocates Library, in Edinburgh, in " Folk-lore," December,
1893. The prose tales, from a copy at Rennes, he published in the " Revue
Celtique," vols. xv. and xvi. An edition of the oldest copy in the Book
of Leinster is still a desideratum. The whole work is full of interesting
pagan allusions, but the different copies, in the case of many names, vary
greatly and even contradict each other.
CHAPTER X
THE IRISH ELYSIUM AND BELIEF IN REBIRTH
CJESAR, writing some fifty years before Christ about the
Gauls and their Druids, tells his countrymen that one of the
prime articles which they taught was that men's souls do not
die — non interlre animas — " but passed over ^after death from
one into another," and their opinion is, adds Caesar, that this
doctrine u greatly tends to the arousing of valour, all fear of
death being despised." * A few years later Diodorus Siculus
wrote that one of their doctrines was " that the souls of men
are undying, and that after finishing their term of existence
they pass into another body," adding that at burials of the
dead some actually cast letters addressed to their departed
relatives upon the funeral pile, under the belief that the dead
would read them in the next world. Timagenes, a Greek who
wrote a history of Gaul now lost, Strabo, Valerius Maximus,
Pomponius Mela, and Lucan 2 in his " Pharsalia," all have
passages upon this vivid belief of the Gauls that the soul
lived again. This doctrine must also have been current in
Britain, where the Druidic teaching was, to use Caesar's phrase,
1 " De Bello Gallico," vi. 14.
2 See "Voyage of Bran," vol. ii. pp. 107-111, where all these passages
have been lucidly collected by Mr. Nutt.
94
THE ELYSIUM AND BELIEF IN REBIRTH 95
"discovered, and thence brought into Gaul," and it would
have been curious indeed if Ireland did not share in it.
There is, moreover, abundant evidence to show that the
doctrine of metempsychosis was perfectly familiar to the pagan
Irish, as may be seen in the stories of the births of Cuchulain,
Etain, the Two Swineherds, Conall Cearnach, Tuan Mac
Cairill, and Aedh Slane.1 But there is not, in our existing
literature, any evidence that the belief was ever elevated into
a philosophical doctrine of general acceptance, applicable to
every one, still less that there was ever any ethical stress laid
upon the belief in rebirth. It is only the mythological
element in the belief in metempsychosis which has come down
to us, and from which we ascertain that the pagan Irish
believed that supernatural beings could become clothed in flesh
and blood, could enter into women and be born again, could
take different shapes and pass through different stages of
existence, as fowls, animals, or men. What the actual
doctrinal form of the familiar idea was, or how far it influenced
the popular mind, we have no means of knowing. But as
Mr. Nutt well remarks, "early Irish religion must have
possessed some ritual, and what in default of an apter term
must be styled philosophical as well as mythological elements.
Practically the latter alone have come down to us, and that in
a romantic rather than in a strictly mythical form. Could
we judge Greek religion aright if fragments of Apollodorus or
the ' Metamorphoses ' were all that survived of the literature it
inspired ? "2 The most that can be said upon the subject, then,
is that the doctrine of rebirth was actually taught with a
deliberate ethical purpose — that of making men brave, since on
being slain in this life they passed into a new one — amongst
the Celts of Gaul, that it must have been familiar to the
Britons between whose Druids and those of Gaul so close a
resemblance subsisted, and that the idea of rebirth which
1 All of these have been studied by Mr. Nutt, chap. xiv.
8 Vol. ii. p. 121.
96 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
forms part of half-a-dozen existing Irish sagas, was perfectly
familiar to the Irish Gael, although we have no evidence that
it was connected with any ritual or taught as a deliberate
doctrine.
In reconstructing from our existing literature the beliefs and
religion ot our ancestors, we can only do so incompletely, and
with difficulty, from passages in the oldest sagas and other
antique fragments, mostly of pagan origin, from allusions in
very esrly poems, from scanty notices in the annals, and from
the lives of early saints. The relatively rapid conversion of the
island to Christianity in the fifth century, and the enthusiasm
with which the new religion was received, militated against
any full transmission of pagan belief or custom. We cannot
now tell whether all the ancient Irish were imbued with the
same religious beliefs, or whether these varied — as they probably
did — from tribe to tribe. Probably all the Celtic races, even
in their most backward state, believed — so far as they had any
persuasion on the subject at all — in the immortality of the soul.
Where the souls of the dead went to, when they were not re-
incarnated, is not so clear. They certainly believed in a happy
Other- World, peopled by a happy race, whither people were
sometimes carried whilst still alive, and to gain which they
either traversed the sea to the north-west, or else entered one
of the Sidh [Shee] mounds, or else again dived beneath the
water.1 In all cases, however, whatever the mode of access,
the result is much the same. A beautiful country is discovered
1 In a large collection of nearly sixty folk-lore stories taken down in
Irish from the lips of the peasantry, I find about five contain allusions to
the belief in another world full of life under water, and about four in a life
in the inside of the hills. The Hy Brasil type — that of finding the dead
living again on an ocean island — is, so far as I have yet collected, quite
unrepresented amongst them. An old Irish expression for dying is going
" to the army of the dead," used by Deirdre in her lament, and I find a
variant of it so late as the beginning of this century, in a poem by Raftery,
a blind musician of the county Mayo, who tells his countrymen to remember
that they must go " to the meadow of the dead." See Raftery's " Aith-
reachas," in my " Religious Songs of Connacht," p. 266.
THE ELYSIUM AND BELIEF IN REBIRTH 97
where a happy race free from care, sickness, and death, spend
the smiling hours in simple, sensuous pleasures.
There is a graphic description of this Elysium in the " Voyage
of Bran," a poem evidently pagan,1 and embodying purely
pagan conceptions. A mysterious female, an emissary from
the lovely land, appears in Bran's household one day, when the
doors were closed and the house full of chiefs and princes, and
no one knew whence she came, and she chanted to them
twenty-eight quatrains describing the delights of the pleasant
country.
" There is a distant isle
Around which sea-horses glisten,
A fair course against the white-swelling surge,
Four feet uphold it.2
Feet of white bronze under it,
Glittering through beautiful ages.
Lovely land throughout the world's age
On which the many blossoms drop.
An ancient tree there is with blossoms
On which birds call to the Hours.
Tis in harmony, it is their wont
To call together every Hour.
1 Admirably translated by Kuno Meyer, who says " there are a large
number of [word] forms in the 'Voyage of Bran/ as old as any to be found
in the Wurzburg Glosses," and these Professor Thurneysen ascribes unhesi-
tatingly to the seventh century. Zimmer also agrees that the piece is not
later than the seventh century, that is, was first written down in the seventh
century, but this is no criterion of the date of the original composition.
2 I give Kuno Meyer's translation : in the original —
" Fil inis i n-eterchein
Immataitnet gabra rein
Rith find fris toibgel tondat
Ceitheoir cossa foslongat."
In modern Irish the first two lines would run
" [Go] bhfuil inis i n-idir-chein
Um a dtaithnigeann gabhra rein."
Rein being the genitive of rian, " the sea," which, according to M. d'Arbois,
the Gaels brought with them as a reminiscence of the Rhine, see above p. 10.
98 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
Unknown is wailing or treachery
In the familiar cultivated land,
There is nothing rough or harsh,
But sweet music striking on the ear.
Without grief, without sorrow, without death,
Without any sickness, without debility,
That is the sign of Emain,
Uncommon, an equal marvel.
A beauty of a wondrous land
Whose aspects are lovely,
Whose view is a fair country,
Incomparable in its haze.
The sea washes the wave against the land,
Hair of crystal drops from its mane.
Wealth, treasures of every hue,
Are in the gentle land, a beauty of freshness,
Listening to sweet music,
Drinking the best of wine.
Golden chariots on the sea plain
Rising with the tide to the sun,
Chariots of silver in the plain of sports
And of unblemished bronze.
At sunrise there will come
A fair man illumining level lands,
He rides upon the fair sea- washed plain,
He stirs the ocean till it is blood.
Then they row to the conspicuous stone
From which arise a hundred strains.
It sings a strain unto the host
Through long ages, it is not sad,
Its music swells with choruses of hundreds.
They look for neither decay nor death.
THE ELYSIUM AND BELIEF IN REBIRTH 99
There will come happiness with health
To the land against which laughter peals.
Into Imchiuin [the very calm place] at every season,
Will come everlasting joy.
It is a day of lasting weather
That showers [down] silver on the land,
A pure-white cliff in the verge of the sea
Which from the sun receives its heat."
Manannan, the Irish Neptune, driving in a chariot across the
sea, which to him was a flowery plain, meets Bran thereafter,
and chants to him twenty-eight more verses about the lovely
land of Moy Mell, " the Pleasant Plain," which the unknown
lady had described, and they are couched in the same strain.
" Though [but] one rider is seen
In Moy Mell of many powers,
There are many steeds on its surface
Although thou seest them not.
A beautiful game, most delightful
They play [sitting] at the luxurious wine,
Men and gentle women under a bush
Without sin, without crime.
A wood with blossom and fruit,
On which is the vine's veritable fragrance ;
A wood without decay, without defect,
On which are leaves of golden hue."
Then, prophesying of the death of Mongan, he sang —
" He will drink a drink from Loch Lo,
While he looks at the stream of blood ;
The white hosts will take him under a wheel of clouds,
To the gathering where there is no sorrow."
I know of few things in literature comparable to this lovely
description, at once so mystic and so sensuous, of the joys of
ioo LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
the other world. To my mind it breathes the very essence of
Celtic glamour, and is shot through and through with the
Celtic love of form, beauty, landscape, company, and the
society of woman. How exquisite the idea of being trans-
ported from this world to an isle around which sea-horses
glisten, where from trees covered with blossoms the birds call
in harmony to the Hours, a land whose haze is incomparable !
What a touch ! Where hair of crystal drops from the mane
of the wave as it washes against the land ; where the chariots
of silver and of bronze assemble on the plain of sports,
in the country against which laughter peals, and the day of
lasting weather showers silver on the land. And then to play
sitting at the luxurious wine —
" Men and gentle women under a bush
Without sin, without crime ! "
I verily believe there is no Gael alive even now who would
not in his heart of hearts let drift by him the Elysiums of
Virgil, Dante, and Milton to grasp at the Moy Mell of the
unknown Irish pagan.
In another perhaps equally ancient story, that of the elope-
ment of Connla, son of Conn of the Hundred Battles,1 with a
lady who is a denizen of this mysterious land, we find the
unknown visitor giving nearly the same account of it as that
given to Bran.
" Whence hast thou come, O Lady ? " said the Druid.
" I have come," said she, " from the lands of the living in
which there is neither death, nor sin, nor strife;2 we enjoy
perpetual feasts without anxiety, and benevolence without
contention. A large Sidh [Shee, " fairy-mound "] is where we
1 Preserved in the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, a MS. compiled from older
ones about the year noo. See for this story " Gaelic Journal," vol. ii.
p. 306.
2 " Dodeochadsafor in ben a tirib bed ait inna hi has na pcccad na imorbus,
i.e. [go], ndeachas-sa ar san bhean 6 tiribh na mbeo, ait ann nach mbionn
bas na peacadh na immarbhadh."
THE ELYSIUM AND BELIEF IN REBIRTH 101
dwell, so that it is hence we are called the Sidh [Shee]
people."
The Druids appear, as I have already remarked, to have
acted as intermediaries between the inhabitants of the other
world and of this, and in the story of Connla one of them
chants against the lady so that her voice was not heard, and he
drives her away through his incantation. She comes back,
however, at the end of a month, and again summons the prince.
" 'Tis no lofty seat," she chanted, " upon which sits Connla
amid short-lived mortals awaiting fearful death ; the ever-living
ones invite thee to be the ruler over the men of Tethra."
Conn of the Hundred Battles, who had overheard her
speech, cried, " Call me the Druid ; I see her tongue has
been allowed her to-day [again]."
But she invisible to all save the prince replied to him —
" O Conn of the Hundred Battles, druidism is not loved,
for little has it progressed to honour on the great Righteous
Strand, with its numerous, wondrous, various families."
After that she again invites the prince to follow her,
saying —
" There is another land which it were well to seek.
I see the bright sun is descending, though far off we shall reach it
ere night.
Tis the land that cheers the mind of every one that turns to me.
There is no race in it save only women and maidens."
The prince is overcome with longing. He leaps into her
well-balanced, gleaming boat of pearl. Those who were left
behind upon the strand " saw. them dimly, as far as the sight
of their eyes could reach. They sailed the sea away from
them, and from that day to this have not been seen, and it is
unknown where they went to."
In the fine story of Cuchulain's sick-bed,1 in which though
1 Also contained in the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, a MS. transcribed about
the year uoo.
102 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
the language of the text is not so ancient, the conceptions
are equally pagan, the deserted wife of Manannan, the Irish
Neptune, falls in love with the human warrior, and invites
him to the other-world to herself, through the medium of an
ambassadress. Cuchulain sends his charioteer Laeg along with
this mysterious ambassadress, that he may bring him word
again, to what kind of land he is invited. Laeg, when he
returns, repeats a glowing account of its beauty, which
coincides closely with those given by the ladies who summoned
Bran and Connla.
" There are at the western door,
In the place where the sun goes down,
A stud of steeds of the best of breeds
Of the grey and the golden brown.
There wave by the eastern door
Three crystal-crimson trees,
Whence the warbling bird all day is heard
On the wings of the perfumed breeze.
And before the central door
Is another, of gifts untold.
All silvern-bright in the warm sunlight,
Its branches gleam like gold." x
In the saga of the Wooing of Etain we meet with what is
substantially the same description. She is the wife of one of
the Tuatha De Danann, is reborn as a mortal, and weds the
king of Ireland. Her former husband, Midir, still loves her,
follows her, and tries to win her back. She is unwilling, and
he chants to her this description of the land to which he would
lure her.
1 Literally : " There are at the western door, in the place where the sun
goes down, a stud of steeds with grey-speckled manes and another crimson
brown. There are at the eastern door three ancient trees of crimson
crystal, from which incessantly sing soft-toned birds. There is a tree in
front of the court, it cannot be matched in harmony, a tree of silver against
which the sun shines, like unto gold is its great sheen."
THE ELYSIUM AND BELIEF IN REBIRTH 103
" Come back to me, lady, to love and to shine
In the land that was thine in the long-ago,
Where of primrose hue is the golden hair
And the limbs are as fair as the wreathed snow.
To the lakes of delight that no storm may curl,
Where the teeth are as pearl, the eyes as sloes,
Which alight, whenever they choose to seek,
On the bloom of a cheek where the foxglove glows.
Each brake is alive with the flowers of spring,
Whence the merles sing in their shy retreat ;
Though sweet be the meadows of Innisfail,
Our beautiful vale is far more sweet.
Though pleasant the mead be of Innisfail,
More pleasant the ale of that land of mine,
A land of beauty, a land of truth,
Where youth shall never grow old or pine.
Fair rivers brighten the vale divine, —
There are choicest of wine and of mead therein,
And heroes handsome and women fair
Are in dalliance there without stain or sin.
From thence we see, though we be not seen,
We know what has been and shall be again,
And the cloud that was raised by the first man's fall,
Has concealed us all from the eyes of men.
Then come with me, lady, to joys untold,
And a circlet of gold on thy head shall be,
Banquets of milk and of wine most rare,
Thou shalt share, O lady, and share with me." "
1 A Befind in raga lim / I tir n-ingnad hifil rind / Is barr sobairche folt
and / Is dath snechtu chorp coind. Literally : " O lady fair wouldst thou
come with me to the wondrous land that is ours, where the hair is as the
blossom of the primrose, where the tender body is as fair as snow.
There shall be no grief there nor sorrow ; white are the teeth there, black
are the eyebrows, a delight to the eye is the number of our host, and on
every cheek is the hue of the foxglove.
" The crimson of the foxglove is in every brake, delightful to the eye
[there] the blackbird's eggs. Although pleasant to behold are the plains of
Innisfail, after frequenting the Great Plain rarely wouldst thou [remember
them]. Though heady to thee the ale of Innisfail, headier the ale of the
104 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
The casual Christian allusion in the penultimate verse need
not lead us astray, nor does it detract from the essentially
pagan character of the rest, for throughout almost the whole
of Irish literature the more distinctly or ferociously pagan any
piece is, the more certain it is to have a Christian allusion
added at the end as a make-weight. There is great ingenuity
displayed in thus turning the pagan legend into a Christian
homily by the addition of two lines suggesting that if men
were not sinful, this beautiful pagan world and the beautiful
forms that inhabited it would be visible to the human ken.
This was sufficient to disarm any hostility to the legend on the
part of the Church.
From what we have said it is evident that the ancient Irish
pagans believed in the possibility of rebirth, and founded
many of their mythical sagas on the doctrine of metempsychosis,
and that they had a highly ornate and fully-developed belief in
a happy other- world or Elysium, to which living beings were
sometimes carried off without going through the forms of
death. But it is impossible to say whether rebirth with life
in another world, for those whom the gods favoured, was
taught as a doctrine or had any ethical significance attached to
it by the druids of Ireland, as it most undoubtedly had by
their cousins the druids of Gaul.
great land, a beauty of a land, the land I speak of. Youth never grows
there into old age. Warm, sweet streams traverse the country with
choicest mead and choicest wine, handsome persons [are there], without
blemish, conception without sin, without stain.
" We see every one on every side, and no one seeth us ; the cloud of
Adam's wrong-doing has concealed us from being numbered. O lady, if
thou comest to my brave land, it is a crown of gold shall be upon thy
head, fresh flesh of swine, banquets of new milk and ale shalt thou have
with me then, fair lady."
Apropos of the Irish liking for swine's flesh, Stanihurst tells a good
story : " ' No meat,' says he, ' they fansie so much as porke, and the fatter
the better. One of John O'Nel's [Shane O'Neill's] household demanded
of his fellow whether beefe were better than porke. ' That,' quoth the
other, ' is as intricate a question as to ask whether thou art better than
O'Nell.' "
CHAPTER XI
WE now come to the question, When and where did the Irish
get their alphabet, and at what time did they begin to practise
the art of writing ? The present alphabet of the Irish, which
they have used in all their books from the seventh century
down, and probably for three hundred years before that, is only
a modification — and a peculiarly beautiful one — of the Roman
letters. This alphabet they no doubt borrowed from their
neighbours, the Romanised Britons, within whose territory
they had established themselves, and with whom — now in
peace, now in war — they carried on a vigorous and constant
intercourse.1 The general use of letters in Ireland is, how-
ever, to be attributed to the early Christian missionaries.
But there is no reason to believe that it was St. Patrick, or
indeed any missionary, who first introduced them. There
probably were in Ireland many persons in the fourth century,
or perhaps even earlier, who were acquainted with the art of
1 Dr. Jones, the Bishop of St. Davids, in his interesting book, " Vestiges
of the Gael in Gwynedd " (North Wales) has come to the conclusion that
the Irish occupied the whole of Anglesey, Carnarvon, Merioneth, and
Cardiganshire, with at least portions of Denbighshire, Montgomery, and
Radnor. Their occupation of part of the south and south-west of
England is attested by the area of Ogam finds.
105
io6 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
writing. Already, at the beginning of the third century at
least, says Zimmer in his " Keltische Studien," British
missionaries were at work in the south of Ireland. Bede, in
his history, says distinctly that Palladius was sent from Rome
in the year 431 to the Irish " who believed in Christ " — "ad
Scottos in Christum credentes." Already, at the close of the
third century, there was an organised British episcopate, and
three British bishops attended the Council of Aries held in
314. It is quite impossible that the numerous Irish colonies
settled in the south of England and in Wales could have
failed to come into contact with this organised Church, and
even to have been influenced by it. The account in the
Acta Sanctorum, of Declan, Bishop of Waterford, said to
have been born in 347, and of Ailbe, another southern bishop,
who met St. Patrick, may be looked upon as perfectly true
in so far as it relates to the actual existence of these pre-
Patrician bishops. St. Chrysostom, writing in the year 387,
mentions that already churches and altars had been erected in
the British Isles. Pelagius, the subtle and persuasive heresiarch
who taught with such success at Rome about the year 400,
and acquired great influence there, was of Irish descent — " habet
progeniem Scotticae gentis de Brittanorum vicinia," said St.
Jerome. As St. Augustine and Prosper of Aquitaine call
him " Briton " and " British scribe," he probably belonged to
one of the Irish colonies settled in Wales or the South-west of
England. His success at Rome is a proof that some Irish
families at least were within reach of literary education in the
fourth century. His friend and teacher, Celestius, has also
been claimed as an Irishman, but Dr. Healy has shown that
this claim is perhaps founded upon a misconception.1
" The influence of the ancient Irish on the Continent,"
says Dr. Sigerson, " began in the works of Sedulius,
whose ' Carmen Paschale,' published in the fifth century,
1 " Ireland's Ancient Schools and Scholars," p. 39. I find Migne, in his
note on Pelagius, apparently confounding Scotia with Great Britain.
EARLY USE OF LETTERS 107
is the first great Christian epic worthy of the name."
Sedulius, the Virgil of theological poetry, flourished in
the first half of the fifth century, and seems to have
studied in Gaul, passed into Italy, and finally resided in
Achaia in Greece, which he seems to have made his
home. There are at least eight Irish Siadals (in Latin
Sedulius, in English Shiel) commemorated by Colgan. The
strongest evidence of Sedulius's Irish nationality is that the
Irish geographer Dicuil, in the eighth century, quoting some
of his lines, calls him noster Sedulius. John of Tritenheim,
towards the close of the fifteenth century, distinctly calls him
an Irishman natlone Scotus, but attributes to him the verses
of a later Sedulius. Dr. Sigerson, by a clever analysis of his
verse-peculiarities confirms this opinion.1
In the "Tripartite Life of St. Patrick" we read that the
druids at the king's court, when St. Patrick arrived there,
possessed books, and when, at a later date, St. Patrick deter-
mined upon revising the Brehon law code, the books in
which it was written down were laid before him. That there
has come down to our time no written record earlier than the
seventh or eighth century2 is chiefly due to the enormous
destruction of books by the Danes and English. The same
causes produced a like effect in Britain, for the oldest surviving
British MSS. are not even as old as ours, although the art of
writing must have been known and practised there since the
Roman occupation.
The Irish had, however, another system of writing which
1 See for Dr. Sigerson's ingenious argument "Bards of the Gael and
Gaul," Introduction, p. 30.
2 Except perhaps on stone. There is an inscription on a stone in
Galway, " Lie Luguaedon Mace Lmenueh," for a facsimile of which
see O'Donovan's grammar, p. 411. O'Donovan says it was set up over a
nephew of St. Patrick's. Mr. Macalister reads it no doubt correctly, " Lie
Luguaedon macci Menueh." This is probably the oldest extant inscription
in Roman letters, and it shows that the old Ogam form maqui had already
changed into mac[c]i. The "c" in place of "q" is only found on the
later Ogam stones, and only one stone is found to read " maic."
io8 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
they themselves invented. This was the celebrated Ogam
script, consisting of a number of short lines, straight or slant-
ing,1 and drawn either below, above, or through one long
stem-line, which stem-line is generally the angle between two
sides of a long upright rectangular stone. These lines repre-
sented letters ; and over two hundred stones have been found
inscribed with Ogam writing. It is a remarkable fact that
rude as this device for writing is, it has been applied with
considerable skill, and is framed with much ingenuity. For in
every case it is found that those letters which, like the vowels,
are most easily pronounced, are also in Ogam the easiest to
inscribe, and the simpler sounds are represented by simpler
characters than those that are more complex. To account for
the philosophical character of this alphabet 2 " than which no
1 Thus four cuts to the right of or below the long line stand for S, above
it they mean C, passing through the long line half on one side and half on
the other they mean E. These straight lines, being easily cut on stone
with a chisel, continued long in use. The long line, with reference to
which all the letters are drawn, is usually the right angle or corner of the
upright stone between the two sides. The inscription usually begins at
the left-hand corner of the stone facing the reader and is read upwards,
and is sometimes continued down on the right-hand angular line as well.
The vowels are very small cuts on the angle of the stone, but much larger
than points. There is no existing book written in Ogam, but various
alphabets of it have been preserved in the Book of Ballymote, and some
small metal articles have been found inscribed with it, showing that its
use was not peculiar to pillar stones.
2 See a curious monograph by Dr. Ernst Rethwisch entitled, " Die
Inschrift von Killeen Cormac und der Ursprung der Sprache," 1886.
" Einfachere Schriftzeichen als das keltische Alphabet sind nicht
denkbar . . . die Vocale haben die einfachsten Syinbole und unter den
Vocalen haben wieder die am bequemsten auszusprechenden bequemer
zu machende Zeichen wie die Andern. Unter den Consonanten, hat die
Klasse die am schwierigsten gelingt . . . die am wenigsten leicht
einzuritzenden Zeichen : die Gaumenlaute." He is greatly struck by " der
so verstandig und sachgemass erscheinende Trieb dem einfachsten Laut
das einfachste Symbol zu widmen." " Eine Erklarung [of the rational
simplicity of the Ogam script] ist nur moglich wenn man annimmt dass
die natiirliche Begabung der Kelten, der praktische auf Einfachheit und
Beobachtungsgabe beruhende Sinn viel friiher zu einer gewissen Reife
gediehen sind, als bei den Indogermanischen Verwandten" (p. 29).
EARLY USE OF LETTERS 109
•
simpler method of writing is imaginable," a German, Dr.
Rethwisch, who examined it from this side, concluded that
"the natural gifts of the Celts and their practical genius for
simplicity and observation ripened up to a certain stage far
earlier than those of their Indo-European relations." This
statement, however, rests upon the as yet unproved assump-
tion that Ogam writing is pre-Christian and pagan. What
is of more interest is that the author of it supposed that with
one or two changes it would make the simplest conceivable
universal-alphabet or international code of writing. It is very
strange that nearly all the Irish Ogam stones are found in the
south-west, chiefly in the counties of Cork and Kerry, with
a few scattered over the rest of the country — but one in West
Connacht, and but one or two at the most in Ulster.
Between twenty and thirty more have been found in Wales
and Devonshire, and one or two even farther east, thus bear-
ing witness to the colonies planted by the Irish marauders in
early Britain, for Ogam writing is peculiar to the Irish Gael
and only found where he had settled. Ten stones more have
fceen found in Scotland, probably the latest in date of any, for
some of these, unlike the Irish stones, bear Christian symbols.
Many Ogams have been easily read, thanks to the key con-
tained in the Book of Ballymote ; thanks also to the fact that
one or two Ogams have been found with duplicates inscribed
in Latin letters. But many still defy all attempts at decipher-
ing them, though numerous efforts have been made, treating
them as though they were cryptic ciphers, which they were
long believed to be. That Ogam was, as some assert, an
early cryptic alphabet, and one intended to be read only by
the initiated, is both in face of the numbers of such inscrip-
tions already deciphered and in the face of the many instances
recorded in our oldest sagas of its employment, an absurd
hypothesis. It is nearly always treated in them as an ordinary
script which any one could read. It may, however, have been
occasionally used in later times in a cryptic sense, names being
i io LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
written backwards or syllables transposed, but this was certainly
not the original invention. Some of the latest Ogam pillars
are gravestones of people who died so late as the year 600,
but what proportion of them, if any, date from before the
Christian era it is as yet impossible to tell. Certain it is that
the grammatical forms of the language inscribed upon most of
them are vastly older than those of the very oldest manuscripts,1
and agree with those of the old Gaulish linguistic monuments.
Cormac's Glossary — a work of the ninth or tenth century —
the ancient sagas, and many allusions in the older literature,
would seem to show that Ogam writing was used by the
pagan Irish. Cormac, explaining the word fe^ says that " it
was a wooden rod used by the Gael for measuring corpses
and graves, and that this rod used always to be kept in the
burial-places of the heathen, and it was a horror to every
one even to take it in his hand, and whatever was abominable
to them they (the pagans) used to inscribe on it in Ogam."2
The sagas also are full of allusions to Ogam writing. In the
" Tain Bo Chuailgne," which probably assumed substantially
its present shape in the seventh century, we are told how
when Cuchulain, after assuming arms, drove into Leinster with
1 As Curd and maqi for the genitives of Core and mac. In later times
the genitive ending i, became incorporated in the body of the word,
making Cuirc and maic in the MSS., which latter subsequently became
attenuated still further into the modern mic. Another very common and
important form is avi, which has been explained as from a nominative
*avios [for (*p)avios], Old Irish aue, modern ua or o. Another extra-
ordinary feature is the suffix *gnos = cnos, the regular patronymic forma-
tive of the Gaulish inscriptions. Another important word is muco, genitive
tnucot, meaning "descendant," but in some cases apparently "chief."
The word anm or even ancm, which often precedes the genitive of the
proper noun, as anm meddugini, has not yet been explained or accounted
for. All these examples help to show the great age of the linguistic '
monuments preserved in Ogam.
2 "Ocus no bid in flesc sin dogres irelcib nangente ocus bafuath la each a
gabail inalaim ocus each ni ba hadetchi leo dobertis [lege nobentis] tria |
Ogam innti, i.e. Agus do bhiodh an fleasg sin do ghnath i reiligibh na ?
ngente, agus budh fuath, le each a gabhail ann a laimh, agus gach nidh
budh ghranna leo do bhainidis [ghearradaois] tre Ogham innti."
EARLY USE OF LETTERS in
his charioteer and came to the dun or fort of the three sons
of Nechtan, he found on the lawn before the court a stone
pillar, around which was written in Ogam that every hero
who passed thereby was bound to issue a challenge. This was
clearly no cryptic writing but the ordinary script, meant to be
read by every one who passed.1 Cuchulain in the same saga
frequently cuts Ogam on wands, which he leaves in the way
of Meve's army. These are always brought to his friend
Fergus to read. Perhaps the next oldest allusion to Ogam
writing is in the thoroughly pagan "Voyage of Bran," which
both Zimmer and Kuno Meyer consider to have been com-
mitted to writing in the seventh century. We are there told
that Bran wrote the fifty or sixty quatrains of the poem in
Ogam. Again, in Cormac's Glossary 2 we find a story' of how
Lomna Finn mac Cool's fool (druth) made an Ogam and
put it in Finn's way to tell him how his wife had been
unfaithful to him. A more curious case is the story in the
Book of Leinster of Core's flying to the Court of King
Feradach in Scotland. Not knowing how he might be
received he hid in a wood near by. The King's poet, how-
ever, meets him and recognises him, having seen him before
that in Ireland. The poet notices an Ogam on the prince's
shield, and asks him, " Who was it that befriended you with
that Ogam, for it was not good luck which he designed for
you ? " " Why," asked the prince, " what does it contain ? "
" What it contains," said the poet, " is this — that if by day
you arrive at the Court of Feradach the king, your head shall
be struck off before night ; if it be at night you arrive your
head shall be struck off before morning." 3 This Ogam was
1 See Zimmer's " Summary of the Tain Bo Chuailgne," Zeit. f. vgl.,
Sprachforschung, 1887, p. 448.
2 Under the word ore trcith.
3 The classical reader need hardly be reminded of the striking resem-
blance between this and the <7r//zara \vypa which, according to Homer,
Prcetus gave the unsuspecting Bellerophon to bring to the King of Lycia,
iv Trivaict TTTVKT^ Ovfio<j)06pa TroXXa.
ii2 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
apparently readable only by the initiated, for the prince did not
himself know what he was bearing on his shield.
All ancient Irish literature, then, is unanimous in attributing
a knowledge of Ogam to the pre-Christian Irish. M. d'Arbois
de Jubainville seems also to believe in its pagan antiquity, for
when discussing the story of St. Patrick's setting a Latin
alphabet before Fiach, and of the youth's learning to read the
Psalms within the following four-and-twenty hours, he remarks
that the story is just possible since Fiach should have known
the Ogam alphabet, and except for the form of the letters it
and the Latin alphabet were the same.1
St. Patrick, too, tells us in his " Confession " how after his
flight from Ireland he saw a man coming as it were from that
country with innumerable letters, a dream that would scarcely
have visited him had he known that there was no one in
Ireland who could write letters.2
The Ogam alphabet, however, is based upon the Roman.
Of this there can be no doubt, for it contains letters which,
1 The " alphabet " laid before Fiacc, however, was not a list of letters, but
a kind of brief catechism, in Latin " Elementa." St. Patrick is said to hav
written a number of these " alphabets " with his own hand.
2 The " Confession " and Epistles attributed to St. Patrick are, by Whitle
Stokes, Todd, Ussher, and almost all other authorities, considered genuine
Recently J. V. Pflugk-Harttung, in an article in the " Neuer Heidelberge
Jahrbuch," Jahrgang Hi., Heft. I., 1893, has tried to show by interna
evidence that the " Confession " and Epistle, especially the former, are a littl
later than St. Patrick's time, and he relies strongly on this passage, sayin
that it is difficult to imagine how St. Patrick came by the idea that
man could bring him " innumerable letters from the heathen Ireland o
that time, where, except for Ogams and inscribed stones (ausser Ogham
und Skulpturzeicheri), the art of writing was as yet unknown." But seeing
that Christian missionaries were almost certainly at work in Munster a
early as the third century this contention is ridiculous. It is noteworthy
however, that even this critic seems to believe in the antiquity of the Ogam
characters. As to his main contention that the " Confession " is not the wori
of Patrick, Jubainville writes, " II ne m'a pas convaincu " (Revue Celtique
vol. xiv. p. 215), and M. L. Duchesne, commenting on Zimmer's view of St
Patrick's nebulousness, writes, " Contestir 1'authenticite de la Confession
et de la lettre a Coroticus me semble tres aventure" (Ibid., vol. xv. p. 188]
and Thurneysen also entirely refuses his credence.
EARLY USE OF LETTERS 113
according to the key, represents Q (made by five upright
strokes above the stem line), Z, and Y, none of which letters
are used in even the oldest MSS., and two of which at least must
have been borrowed from the Romans. The most, then, that
can at present be said with absolute certainty is, as Dr. Whitley
Stokes cautiously puts it, that these Ogam inscriptions and the
language in which they are couched are " enough to show that
some of the Celts of these islands wrote their language before
the fifth century, the time at which Christianity is supposed to
have been introduced into Ireland." * The presence of these
Roman letters never used by the Irish on vellum, and the
absence of any aspirated letters (which abound even in the
oldest vellum MSS.) are additional proofs of the antiquity of
the Ogam alphabet.
The Irish themselves ascribed the invention of Ogam to
[the god] Ogma, one of the leading Tuatha De Danann,2
and although it may be, as Rhys points out, philologically
unsound to derive Ogam from Ogma, yet there appears to be
an intimate connection between the two words, and Ogma
may well be derived from Ogam, which in its early stage may
have meant fluency or learning rather than letters. Certainly
there cannot be any doubt that Ogma, the Tuatha De Danann,
was the same as the Gaulish god Ogmios of whom Lucian,
that pleasantest of Hellenes, gives us an account so delightfully
graphic that it is worth repeating in its entirety as another
proof of what I shall have more to speak about later on, the
solidarity — to use a useful Gallicism — of the Irish and the
Continental Gauls.
1 Preface to "Three Old Irish Glossaries," p. Iv. Zeuss had already
commented on the Ogams found in the St. Gall codex of Priscian, and
written thus of them, " Figurae ergo vel potius liniae ogamicae non
diversse ab his quae notantur a grammaticis hibernicis, in usu jam in hoc
vetusto codice, quidni etiarn inde a longinquis temporibus?" There are
eight Ogam sentences in a St. Gall MS. of the ninth century which have
been published by Nigra in his " Manoscritto irlandese di S. Gallo."
2 See above, p. 52, note. See O'Donovan's Grammar, p. xxviii, for the
original of the passage from the Book of Ballymote.
H
H4 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
"The Celts," * says Lucian, "call Heracles in the language of their
country Ogmios, and they make very strange representations of the
god. With them he is an extremely old man with a bald forehead
and his few remaining hairs quite grey ; his skin is wrinkled and
embrowned by the sun to that degree of swarthiness which is cha-
racteristic of men who have grown old in a seafaring life ; in fact,
you would fancy him rather to be a Charon or Japetus, one of the
dwellers in Tartarus, or anybody rather than Heracles. But although
he is of this description he is nevertheless attired like Heracles, for
he has on him the lion's skin, and he has a club in the right hand ;
he is duly equipped with a quiver, and his left hand displays a bow
stretched out, in these respects he is quite Heracles.2 It struck me
then that the Celts took such liberties with the appearance of
Heracles in order to insult the gods of the Greeks and avenge
themselves on him in their painting, because he once made a raid
on their territory, when in search of the herds of Geryon he harassed
most of the Western peoples. I have not yet, however, mentioned
the most whimsical part of the picture, for this old man Heracles
draws after him a great number of men bound by their ears, and the
bonds are slender cords wrought of gold and amber, like necklaces
of the most beautiful make ; and although they are dragged on by
such weak ties they never try to run away, though they could easily
do it, nor do they at all resist or struggle against them, planting their
feet in the ground and throwing their weight back in the direction
contrary to that in which they are being led. Quite the reverse,
they follow with joyful countenance in a merry mood, and praising
him who leads them, pressing on, one and all, and slackening their
chains in their eagerness to proceed ; in fact, they look like men
who would be grieved should they be set free. But that which
seemed to me the most absurd thing of all I will not hesitate also to
tell you : the painter, you see, had nowhere to fix the ends of the
cords since the right hand of the god held the club and his left the
1 Translated by Rhys in his " Hibbert Lectures," from Bekker's editioi
No. 7, and Dindorf's, No. 55.
2 The Gauls assimilated their pantheon to those of the Greeks am
Romans in so far as they could, and as the Greek gods are by no mear
always the equivalents of the Roman gods with whom popular opinic
equated them, still less were of course the Gaulish ; and this is a g(
case in point, for Ogmios has evidently nothing of a Hercules aboi
him, though the Gauls tried to make him the equivalent of Hercules b]
giving him the classical club and lion's skin, yet his attributes are per-
fectly different.
EARLY USE OF LETTERS 115
bow ; so he pierced the tip of his tongue and represented the people
as drawn on from it, and the god turns a smiling countenance
towards those whom he is leading. Now I stood a long time look-
ing at these things and wondered, perplexed and indignant. But
a certain Celt standing by, who knew something about our ways,
as he showed by speaking good Greek — a man who was quite
a philosopher I take it in local matters — said to me : ' Stranger,
I will tell you the secret of the painting, for you seem very
much troubled about it. We Celts do not consider the power
of speech to be Hermes as you Greeks do, but we represent it by
means of Heracles, because he is much stronger than Hermes. Nor
should you wonder at his being represented as an old man, for the
power of words is wont to show its perfection in the aged ; for your
poets are, no doubt, right when they say that the thoughts of young
men turn with every wind, and that age has something wiser to tell
us than youth. And so it is that honey pours from the tongue of that
Nestor of yours, and the Trojan orators speak with a voice of the
delicacy of the lily, a voice well covered, so to say, with bloom, for
the bloom of flowers, if my memory does not fail me, has the term
lilies applied to it. So if this old man Heracles (the power of speech)
draws men after him, tied to his tongue by their ears, you have no
reason to wonder ; as you must be aware of the close connection
between the ears and the tongue. Nor is there any injury done him
by the latter being pierced ; for I remember, said he, learning, while
among you, some comic iambics to the effect that all chattering
fellows have the tongue bored at the tip. In a word, we Celts are
of opinion that Heracles himself performed everything by the
power of words, as he was a wise fellow, and that most of his com-
pulsion was effected by persuasion. His weapons, I take it, were his
utterances, which are sharp and well-aimed, swift to pierce the
mind, and you too say that words have wings.' Thus far the
Celt."
We see, then, that the Irish legend that it was Ogma (who
is also said to have been skilled in dialects and poetry) who
invented the Ogam alphabet, so useful as a medium through
which to convey language, is quite borne out by the account
given to Lucian of the Gaulish god Ogmios, the eloquent old
man whose language was endowed with so great a charm that
he took his hearers captive. He turns, says Lucian, towards
his willing captives with a smiling face, and the Irish Ogma,
ii6 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
too, is called Ogma " of the shining countenance." x Nor
does the Gaul in dressing Ogma as a Hercules appear to have
acted altogether whimsically, because not only is Ogma skilled
in poetry and dialects and the inventor of Ogam, but he is
also all through the battle of Moytura actually depicted as the
strong man of the De Danann,- strong enough to push a stone
which eighty pair of oxen could not have moved.
The modern Irish names for books, reading, writing, letters,
pens, and vellum, are all derived from the Latin.2 But there
seem to have been other names in use to designate the early
writing materials of the Irish. These were the Taibhli
Fileadh, " poets' tablets," and Tamhlorg Fileadh, which is
translated by O'Curry as poets' " headless staves." This
latter word, whatever may be the exact meaning of it, is at
least pure Gaelic. We read in the " Colloquy of the Ancients"
that St. Patrick began to feel a little uneasy at the delight
with which he listened to the stories of the ancient Fenians,
and in his over-scrupulous sanctity he feared it might be
wrong to extract such pleasure from merely mundane narra-
tions. Accordingly he consulted his two guardian angels on
the matter, but received an emphatic response from both of
them, not only to the effect that there was no harm in listening
to the stories themselves, but actually desiring him to get
them written down " in poets' tamhlorgs and in the words of
ollavs, for it will be a rejoicing to numbers and to the good
people to the end of time, to listen to those stories." 3 An
1 Grian-aineach, or " of the sunny countenance." See O'Curry MS.
Mat., p. 249. Ogma was, according to some accounts, brother of Breas,
who held the regency amongst the Tuatha De Danann for seven years,
while Nuada was getting his silver hand.
2 Leabhra, leigheadh, sgriobhadh, litreacha, pinn, meamram.
3 " A anam a naem-chleirigh ni mo ina trian a seel innisit na senlaeich ut,
or daig dermait ocus dichhuimne. Ocus sgribthar let-sa i tamlorgaibh
filed ocus i mbriathraib ollamhan, or bud gairdiugad do dronguibh ocus do
degdainib deirid aimsire eisdecht fris na scelaib sin" (" Agallamh," p. 101.
Silva Gadelica," vol. ii.) O'Grady has here translated it by " tabular staffs."
Tdibhli is evidently a Latin loan word, tabdla. The thing to be remem-
bered is that Ogam writing on staves appears to be alluded to.
EARLY USE OF LETTERS 117
ancient passage from the Brehon Laws prescribes that a poet
may carry a tabhall-lorg or tablet-staff, and O'Curry acutely
suggests that these so-called tablet-staves were of the nature of
a fan which could be closed up in the shape of a square stick,
upon the lines and angles of which the poet wrote in Ogam.
We can well imagine the almost superstitious reverence which
in rude times must have attached itself, and which as we know
did attach itself, to the man who could carry about in his
hand the whole history and genealogy of his race, and pro-
bably the catchwords of innumerable poems and the skeletons
of highly-prized narratives. It was probably through these
means that the genealogies of which I have spoken were so
accurately transmitted and kept from the third or fourth
century, and possibly from a still earlier period.
Amongst many other accounts of pre-Christian writing
there is one so curious that it is worth giving here in extenso.*
THE STORY OF BAILE MAC BUAIN, THE SWEET-SPOKEN.
" Buain's only son was Baile.3 He was specially beloved by
Aillinn,2 the daughter of Lewy,3 son of Fergus Fairge — but some say
she was the daughter of Owen, son of Dathi — and he was specially
beloved not of her only, but of every one who ever heard or saw
him, on account of his delightful stories.
" Now Baile and Aillinn made an appointment to meet at Rosnaree,
on the banks of the Boyne in Bregia. And he came from Emania
in the north to meet her, passing over Slieve Fuad and Muirthuimhne
to Traigh mBaile (Dundalk), and here he and his troops unyoked
their chariots, sent their horses out to pasture, and gave themselves
up to pleasure and happiness.
" And while they were there they saw a horrible spectral personage
coming towards them from the South. Vehement were his steps and
his rapid progress. The way he sped over the earth might be com-
1 O'Curry found this piece in the MS. marked H. 3. i8in Trinity College,
Dublin, and has printed it at page 472 of his MS. Materials. Kuno Meyer
has also edited it from a MS. in the British Museum, full of curious word-
equivalents or Kennings. ($ee " Revue Celtique," vol. xiii. p. 221. See
also a fragment of the same story in Kuno Meyer's " Hibernica Minora,"
p. 84.)
2 Pronounced " Bal-a," and " Al-yinn." 3 jn Irish, Lughaidh.
ii8 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
pared to the darting of a hawk down a cliff or to wind from off the
green sea, and his left was towards the land [i.e., he came from the
south along the shore].
" ' Go meet him/ said Baile, ' and ask him where he goes, or
whence he comes, or what is the cause of his haste.'
" ' From Mount Leinster I come, and I go back now to the North,
to the mouth of the river Bann ; and I have no news but of the
daughter of Lewy, son of Fergus, who had fallen in love with Baile
mac Buain, and was coming to meet him. But the youths of Leinster
overtook her, and she died from being forcibly detained, as Druids
and fair prophets had prophesied, for they foretold that they would
never meet in life, but that they would meet after death, and not
part for ever. There is my news,' and he darted away from them
like a blast of wind over the green sea, and they were not able to
detain him.
" When Baile heard this he fell dead without life, and his tomb
and his rath were raised, and his stone set up, and his funeral games
were performed by the Ultonians.
" And a yew grew up through his grave, and the form and shape
of Baile's head was visible on the top of it— whence the place is
called Baile's Strand [now Dundalk].
" Afterwards the same man went to the South to where the maiden
Aillinn was, and went into her grianan or sunny chamber.
" * Whence comes the man whom we do not know ? ' said the
maiden.
" ' From the northern half of Erin, from the mouth of the Bann I
come, and I go past this to Mount Leinster.'
" ' You have news ? ' said the maiden.
" ' I have no news worth mentioning now, only I saw the Ultonians
performing the funeral games and digging the rath, and setting up
the stone, and writing the name of Baile mac Buain, the royal heir
of Ulster, by the side of the strand of Baile, who died while on his
way to meet a sweetheart and a beloved woman to whom he had
given affection, for it was not fated for them to mee£ in life, or for
one of them to see the other living,' and he darted out after telling
the evil news.
" And Aillinn fell dead without life, and her tomb was raised, etc.
And an apple tree grew through her grave and became a great tree
at the end of seven years, and the shape of Aillinn's head was upon
its top.
" Now at the end of seven years poets and prophets and visioners
cut down the yew which was over the grave of Baile, and they made
a poet's tablet of it, and they wrote the visions and the espousals and
EARLY USE OF LETTERS 119
the loves and the courtships of Ulster in it. [The apple tree which
grew over the grave of Aillinn was also cut down] and in like
manner the courtships of Leinster were written in it.
" There came a November eve long afterwards, and a festival was
made to celebrate it by Art, the son of Conn [of the Hundred Battles,
High-king of Ireland], and the professors of every science came to
that feast as was their custom, and they brought their tablets with
them. And these tablets also came there, and Art saw them, and
when he saw them he asked for them ; and the two tablets were
brought and he held them in his hands face to face. Suddenly the
one tablet of them sprang upon the other, and they became united
the same as a woodbine round a twig, and it was not possible to
separate them. And they were preserved like every other jewel in
the treasury at Tara until it was burned by Dunlang, son of Enna,
at the time he burnt the Princesses at Tara, as has been said
' The apple tree of noble Aillinn,
The yew of Baile — small inheritance —
Though they are introduced into poems
Unlearned people do not understand them.'
and Ailbhe, daughter of Cormac, grandson of Conn [of the Hundred
Battles] said too
* What I liken Lumluine to
Is to the Yew of Baile's rath,
What I liken the other to
Is to the Apple Tree of Aillinn.' "
So far this strange tale. But poetic as it is, it yields —
unlike most — its chief value when rationalised, for as O 'Curry
remarks, it was apparently invented to account for some in-
scribed tablets in the reign of King Art in the second century,
which had — as we ourselves have seen in the case of so
many leaves of very old manuscripts at this day — become
fastened to each other, so that they clung inextricably together
and could not be separated.
Now the massacre of the Princesses at Tara happened,
according to the " Four Masters," in the year 241, when the
tablets were burnt. Hence one of two things must be the
case ; the story must either have originated before that date to
account for the sticking together of the tablets, or else some
120 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
one must have invented it long afterwards, that is, must,
without any apparent cause, have invented a story out of his
own head, as to how there were once on a time two tablets
made of trees which once grew on two tombs which were once
fastened together before Art, son of Conn, and which were
soon afterwards unfortunately burnt. A supposition which,
considering there were then, ex hypothesi, no adhering tablets
to prompt the invention, appears at first sight improbable.
Brash, who made personal examination of almost every
Ogam known to exist, and whose standard work on the
subject reproduces most of the inscriptions discovered up to
the date of writing, was of opinion that no Ogam monument
had anything Christian about it, and that if any Christian
symbol were discovered on an Ogam stone, it must be of later
date than the Ogam writing. Dr. Graves, however, has
since shown that Ogam was in some few cases at least used
over the graves of Christians ; and he believes that all Ogam
writing is really post-Christian, despite the absence of Christian
emblems on the stones, and that it belongs to a comparatively
modern period — " in fact, for the most part, to a time between
the fifth and seventh century." x Brash's great work was
supplemented by Sir Samuel Ferguson's, and since that time
Professor Rhys2 and Dr. Whitley Stokes have thrown upon
the inscriptions themselves all the light that the highest
critical acumen equipped with the completest philological
training could do, and have, to quote Mr. Macalister,
" between them reduced to order the confusion which almost
seemed to warrant the cryptical theories, and have thereby
raised Ogam inscriptions from the position of being mere
learned playthings to a place of the highest philological im-
portance, not only in Celtic but in Indo-European epigraphy."
1 " Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy," May, 1894.
2 See " Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland," vol. xxvi.
p. 263.
EARLY USE OF LETTERS 121
He himself — the latest to deal with the subject — waves for the
present as " difficult — perhaps in some measure insoluble " —
all " questions of the time, place, and manner of the develop-
ment of the Ogham script." * Rhys has traced in certain of
the inscriptions the influence exercised on the spoken language
of the Celtic people by an agglutinating pre-Celtic tongue.2
This gives us a glimpse at the pre-Aryan languages of the
British Isles, which is in the highest degree interesting.
To me it seems probable that the Irish discovered the use of
letters either through trade with the Continent or through the
Romanised Britons, at any time from the first or second century
onward. But how or why they invented the Ogam alphabet,
instead of using Roman letters, or else Greek ones like the
Gauls, is a profound mystery. One thing is certain, namely,
that the Ogam alphabet — at whatever time invented — is a
possession peculiar to the Irish Gael, and only to be found
where he made his settlements.
1 " Studies in Irish Epigraphy," London, 1897, part i., by R. A. Stewart
Macalister, who gives a most lucid study of the Ogam inscriptions in the
Barony of Corcaguiney and of a few more, with a clear and interesting
preface on the Ogam words and case-endings.
3 It is thus he explains such Ogam forms as " Ere maqi maqi-Ercias,"
i.e., [the stone] of Ere, son of, etc. But " Ere " is nominative, " maqi " is
genitive, hence " Ere maqi " must be looked upon as one word, agglu-
tinated as it were, in which the genitive ending of the "maqi" answers
for both. As a rule, however, the name of the interred is in the genitive
case in apposition to "maqi."
CHAPTER XII
EARLY IRISH CIVILISATION
IT has been frequently assumed, especially by English writers,
that the pre-historic Irish, because of their remoteness from
the Continent, must have been ruder, wilder, and more un-
civilised than the inhabitants of Great Britain. But such an
assumption is — to say nothing of our literary remains — in no
way borne out by the results of archaeological research. The
contrary rather appears to be the case, that in point of wealth,
artistic feeling, and workmanship, the Irish of the Bronze Age
surpassed the inhabitants of Great Britain.
When we read such accounts as that, for example, in the
Book of Ballymote, of Cormac mac Art, taking his seat at the
assembly in Tara, all covered with gold and jewels, we must
not set it down to the perfervid imagination of the chronicler
without first consulting what Irish archaeology has to say
upon the point. The appearance of Cormac (king of Ireland
in the third century, and perhaps greatest of pre-Christian
monarchs), is thus described. "Beautiful," says the writer,
quoting probably from ancient accounts now lost, "was the
appearance of Cormac in that assembly, flowing and slightly
curling was his golden hair. A red buckler with stars and
animals of gold and fastenings of silver upon him. A crimson
122
EARLY IRISH CIVILISATION 123
cloak in wide descending folds around him, fastened at his
neck with precious stones. A torque of gold around his
neck. A white shirt with a full collar, and intertwined with
red gold thread upon him. A girdle of gold, inlaid with
precious stones, was around him. Two wonderful shoes of
gold, with golden loops upon his feet. Two spears with
golden sockets in his hands, with many rivets of red bronze.
And he was himself, besides, symmetrical and beautiful of form,
without blemish or reproach." The abundance of gold orna-
ment which Cormac is here represented as wearing, is no
mere imagination of the writer's. It is founded upon the
undoubted fact that of all countries in the West of Europe
Ireland was pre-eminent for its wealth in gold. How much
wealthier was Ireland than Great Britain may be imagined
from the fact that while the collection in the British Museum
of pre-historic gold from England, Scotland, and Wales
together amounted a couple of years ago to some three dozen
ounces, that in the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin weighs five
hundred and seventy ounces. And yet the collection in the
Academy contains only a small part of the gold-finds made in
Ireland, for before 1861, when the new law about treasure-
trove came into force, great numbers of gold objects are known
to have been sold to the goldsmiths and melted down. The
wealth of Ireland in gold — some of it found and smelted in the
Wicklow mountains1 — must have at an early period deter-
1 In the Irish Annals gold is said to have been first smelted in Leinster.
As late as the last century native gold was discovered on the confines of
Wicklow and Wexford, and nuggets of 22, 18, 9, and 7 ounces are
recorded as having been found there. Mr. Coffey quotes a most interesting
account by a Mr. Weaver, director of the works established there by the Irish
Government before the Union to look for gold. "The discovery of native
gold in Ballinvally stream, at Croghan Kinshella," says Mr. Weaver, " was
at first kept secret, but being divulged, almost the whole population of the
immediate neighbourhood flocked in to gather so rich a harvest, actually
neglecting at the time the produce of their own fields. This happened about
the autumn of the year 1796, when several hundreds of people might be
seen daily assembled digging and searching for gold in the banks and bed
of the stream. Considerable quantities were thus collected ; this being as
124 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
mined continental trade in its direction, and we have seen that
Tacitus reported its harbours as being better known through
trade than those of Great Britain, or, on the most unfavour-
able reading of the passage, as being " known by commerce
and merchants."1 This is also borne out by archaeologists.
Professor Montelius, who has traced a close connection in
pre-historic times between Scandinavia and the West of
Europe,2 regards much of the pre-historic gold found in the
northern countries as Irish. Speaking of certain gold orna-
ments found in Fiinen, which show, according to him, marked
Irish influence, he writes : " Gold ornaments like these have
not been discovered elsewhere in Scandinavia, while a great
number of similar ornaments have been found in the British
Isles, especially in Ireland, whose wealth of gold in the Bronze
Age is amazing." Again he writes, " As certain of the gold
it subsequently proved the most productive spot ; and the populace
remained in undisturbed possession of the place for nearly six weeks,
when Government determined to commence active operations. . . .
Regular stream works were soon established, and up to the unhappy time
of the rebellion in May, 1798, when the works were destroyed, Government
had been fully reimbursed its advances ; the produce of the undertaking
having defrayed its own expenses and left a surplus in hand." The total
amount of gold collected from this place in the last hundred years is
valued at about £30,000. This particular spot had been probably overlooked,
as Mr. Coffey remarks, by the searchers of earlier days, but no doubt other
auriferous streams in the Wicklow mountains had given up their gold
long since in pre-historic times to the ancient workers. (See Coffey's
" Origins of Pre-historic Ornament in Ireland," p. 40.) Dr. Frazer, on the
other hand, does not believe that any great part of the gold found in
Ireland is indigenous, and talks of Spain and South Russia, and gold
plundered from Britain. But if this be the case, what an enormous pre-
historic trade Ireland must have carried on, or what a powerful invader
she must have been to come by such quantities of gold ! (So? Dr. Frazer's
paper in R. I. A. Proceedings, May, 1896). He has since supplemented
this by another in the Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries in
which he leans to the opinion that the Roman aurei, the coins plundered
from the Britons, were the real source of Irish gold.
1 See above, p. 21, note 3.
2 " Verbindungen zwischen Skandinavien und dem westlichen Europa
vor Christi Geburt" (" Archiv fur Anthropologie," vol. xix., quoted by Mr.
George Coffey in his " Origins of Pre-historic Ornament in Ireland," p. 63).
EARLY IRISH CIVILISATION 125
objects found in Denmark have been introduced demonstrably
from the British Islands, probably from Ireland, the thought
is obvious — is not a great part of the other gold objects found
in Southern Scandinavia also of Irish origin, and of the
Bronze Age there ? . . . for this island [Ireland] was, during
the Bronze Age, one of the lands of Europe richest in gold."
"No other country in Europe possesses so much manufactured
gold belonging to early and mediaeval times," writes Mr.
Ernest Smith.1
It is true that the Irish Celts, despite their mineral wealth,
never minted coin, a want which has been adduced to prove
a lack of civilisation on their part. But, as Mr. Coffey points
out, coinage is a comparatively late invention ; the Egyptians
— for all their civilisation — never possessed a native coinage,
and even such ancient trading cities as Carthage and Gades did
not strike coins until a late period. " A little reflection," says
Professor Ridgeway, " shows us that it has been quite possible
for peoples to attain a high degree of civilisation without
feeling any need of what are properly termed coins." " The
absence of coinage," adds Mr. Coffey, " does not necessarily
imply the absence of a currency system, and Professor Ridge-
way has shown that the ancient Irish possessed a system of
of currency or values, and a standard of weights."
A most interesting paper by Mr. Johnson, a Dublin
jeweller, recently read before the Royal Irish Academy,2 has
1 " Notes on the Composition of Ancient Irish Gold and Silver Orna-
ments," by Ernest A. Smith, Assoc. R.S.M., F.C.S, Royal School of Mines,
London, R. I. A. Transactions, May, 1896.
2 " Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy," May, 1896. The tools and
appliances necessary for producing the fine gold fibulae of a private
collector, which Mr. Johnson examined, would be, he says, " a furnace,
charcoal, crucible, mould for ingot, flux, bellows, several hammers, anvil,
swage anvil, swages, chisels for ornament, sectional tool for producing
concentric rings." On one of them, he says, " there is a thickened edge
and a beautiful moulded ornament on the outer side only, which quite
puzzles one as to how it was produced without suggesting what are con-
sidered to be modern tools."
126 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
shown with the authority due to an expert, the marvellous
skill with which the pre-historic Irish worked their gold, and
the wealth of proper appliances which they must have possessed
in order to turn out such unique and admirable results.1
The workmanship of Irish bronze articles is also very fine,
and fully equal to that of Britain, while Greenwell considers
their clay urns and food-vessels superior to the British. In
Ireland he says the urns, " and especially the food vessels, are
of better workmanship, and more elaborately and tastefully
ornamented than in most parts of Britain. Many of the food
vessels found in Argyleshire, and in other districts in the South-
west of Scotland, as might be perhaps expected, are very
Irish in character, and may claim to be equally fine in taste
and delicate in workmanship with those of Ireland." 2
The brilliant appearance of Cormac mac Art when presiding
over the assembly at Tara, covered with gold and jewels,
receives enhanced credibility from the proofs of early Irish
wealth and culture that I have just adduced. Let us glance
at Tara itself, as it existed in the time of Cormac, and see
whether archaeology can throw any light upon the ancient
accounts of that royal hill. It was round this hill that the
great Feis, or assemblage of the men of all Ireland, took place
triennially,3 with a threefold purpose — to promulgate laws
universally binding upon all Ireland ; to test, purge, and
1 A splendid find of gold ornaments made last year near the estuary of
the Foyle river, of a golden model of a boat, evidently a votive offering,
fitted with seat, mast, oars, and punting poles, an exquisitely-wrought gold
collar, decorated in relief with the most beautiful embossed work, torques,
neckchains, etc., has been dated from internal evidences as work of the
second century, the neck-chains being clearly provincial Roman work of
that date. It is to be regretted that these exquisite articles have found
their way to the British Museum, where they will be practically lost,
instead of being added to the unique Irish collection in Dublin, to which
hey properly belong.
2 Greenwell's " British Barrows," p. 62, quoted by Coffey.
3 O'Donovan, in his preface to " The Book of Rights," gives some reasons
for believing that it may have been held only septennially.
EARLY IRISH CIVILISATION 127
sanction the annals and genealogies of Ireland, in the presence
of all men, so that no untruth or flaw might creep in ; and,
finally, to register the same in the great national record, in
later times called the Saltair of Tara, so that cases of disputed
succession might be peacefully settled by reference to this
central authoritative volume. The session of the men of
Ireland thus convened took place on the third day before
Samhain — November day — and ended the third day after it.
We are told that Cormac, who presided over these assemblies,1
had ten persons in constant waiting upon his person, who hardly
ever left him. These were a prince of noble blood, a druid,
a physician, a brehon, a bard, a historian, a musician, and three
stewards. And Keating tells us that the very same arrangement
was observed from Cormac's time — in the third century — to
the death of Brian Boru in the eleventh, the only alteration
being that a Christian priest was substituted for the druid.
To accommodate the chiefs and princes who came to the
great F&s, Cormac built the renowned Teach Miodhchuarta
[Toch Mee-coo-ar-ta] which was able to accommodate a
thousand persons, and which was used at once for a house of
assembly, a banqueting hall, and a sleeping abode. We have
two accounts of this hall and of the other monuments of Tara,
written, the one in poetry, the other in verse, some nine
hundred years ago. The prose of the Dinnseanchus describes
accurately the lie of the building, "to the north-west of the
eastern mound." " The ruins of this house " — it lay in ruins
then as now — " are thus situated : the lower part to the north
and the higher part to the south ; and walls are raised about it
to the east and to the west. The northern side of it is
enclosed and small, the lie of it is north and south. It is in
the form of a long house with twelve doors upon it, or
fourteen, seven to the west and seven to the east. This was
the great house of a thousand soldiers."2 Keating, follow-
1 See the Forus Feasa, p. 354 of O'Mahony's translation.
2 See Petrie's " Antiquities of Tara Hill," p. 129.
128 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
ing his ancient authorities, graphically describes the Tara
assembly.
" The nobles," he writes, " both territorial lords and captains of
bands of warriors, were each man of them, always attended by his
own proper shield-bearer. Again their banquet-halls were arranged
in the following manner, to wit, they were long narrow buildings
with tables arranged along both the opposite walls of the hall ; then
along these side walls there was placed a beam, in which were fixed
numerous hooks (one over the seat destined for each of the nobles),
and between every two of them there was but the breadth of
one shield. Upon these hooks the shanachy hung up the shields
of the nobles previously to their sitting down to the banquet, at
which they all, both lords and captains, sat each beneath his own
shield. However, the most honoured side of the house was
occupied by the territorial lords, whilst the captains of warriors *
were seated opposite to them at the other. The upper end of the
hall was the place of the ollavs, while the lower end was assigned to
the attendants and the officers in waiting. It was also prescribed
that no man should be placed opposite another at the same table,
but that all, both territorial lords and captains, should sit with their
backs towards the wall, beneath their own shields. Again, they
never admitted females into their banquet-halls ; these had a hall of
their own in which they were separately served. It was likewise the
prescribed usage to clear out the banquet-hall previous to serving
the assembled nobles therein. And no one was allowed to remain
in the building but three, namely, a Shanachy and a bolsgaire [mar-
shal or herald], and a trumpeter, the duty of which latter officer was
to summon all the guests to the banquet-hall by the sound of his
trumpet-horn. He had to sound his horn three times. At the first
blast the shield-bearers of the territorial chieftains assembled round
the door of the hall, where the marshal received from them the
shields of their lords, which he then, according to the directions of
the shanachy, hung up each in its assigned place. The trumpeter
then sounded his trumpet a second time, and the shield-bearers of
the chieftains of the military bands assembled round the door of the
banquet-hall, where the marshal received their lords' shields from
them also, and hung them up at the other side of the hall according
to the orders of the shanachy, and over the table of the warriors.
The trumpeter sounded his trumpet the third time, and thereupon
1 This seems a plain allusion to the Fenians, believed in Ireland to have
been Cormac's militia.
EARLY IRISH CIVILISATION 129
both the nobles and the warrior chiefs entered the banquet-hall, and
then each man sat down beneath his own shield, and thus were all
contests for precedency avoided amongst them."
These accounts of the Dinnseanchus and of Keating, taken
from authorities now lost, will be likely to receive additional
credit when we know that the statements made nine hundred
years ago, when Tara had even then lain in ruins for four
centuries, have been verified in every essential particular by
the officers of the Ordnance Survey. The statement in the
Dinnseanchus made nearly nine hundred years ago that there
were either six or seven doors on each side, shows the condition
into which Tara had then fallen, one on each side being so
obliterated that now, also, it is difficult to say whether it was a
door or not. The length of the hall, according to Petrie's
accurate measurements, was seven hundred and sixty feet, and
its breadth was nearly ninety. There was a double row of
benches on each side, running the entire length of the hall,
which would give four rows of men if we remember that the
guests were all seated on the same side of the tables, and
allowing the ample room of three feet to each man, this would
just give accommodation to a thousand. In the middle of the
hall, running down all the way between the benches, there
was a row of fires, and just above each fire was a spit
descending from the roof, at which the joints were roasted.
There is a ground plan of the building, in the Book of Leinster,
and the figure of a cook is rudely drawn with his mouth open,
and a ladle in his hand to baste the joint. The king sat at
the southern end of the hall, and the servants and retainers
occupied the northern.
The banqueting-hall and all the other buildings at Tara
were of wood, nor is the absence of stone buildings in itself
a proof of low civilisation, since, in a country like Ireland,
abounding in timber, wood could be made to answer every
purpose — as in point of fact it does at this day over the greater
part of America, and in all northern countries where forests
i
130 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
are numerous.1 All or most Irish houses, down to the period
of the Danish invasions, were constructed of wood, or of wood
and clay mixed, or of clay and unmortared stones, and their
strongholds were of wooden pallisades planted upon clay earth-
works. This is the reason why so few remains of pre-historic
buildings have come down to us, but it is no reason for believing
that, as in Cormac's banquet-hall, rude palatial effects were not
often produced. An interesting poem in the Dialogue of the
Sages, from the Book of Lismore, describes the house of the
Lady Crede, said to have been a contemporary of Finn mac
Cumhail in the third century.2 Though the poem may not
itself be very old, it no doubt embodies many ancient truths,
and is worth quoting from. A poet comes to woo the lady, and
brings this poem with him. Finn accompanies him. When they
reached her fortress " girls, yellow-haired, of marriageable age,
showed on the balconies of her bowers." The poet sang to her—
" Happy is the house in which she is
Between men and children and women,
Between druids and musical performers,
Between cupbearers and doorkeepers.3
1 Bede mentions, if I remember rightly — I forget where — a church
built in the north of Britain, more Scotorum, robore secto, " of cleft
oak, in the Irish fashion." The Columban churches were also of
wood and wattles, contemporaneous with which were the beehive
cells of uncemented stone, probably less warm and less comfortable
than the thatched houses. " Ce que nous savons des anciens edifices
irlandais," says M. Jubainville, " donne le droit d'affirmer que la plupart
des constructions elevees a Emain macha [i.e., Emania, the capital of
Ulster, and of the Red Branch heroes, two miles west of Armagh] pendant
le periode epique de 1'histoire d'Irlande, ont du etre en bois ; cependant il
y avait etc employe au moins quelques pierres." Angus the Culdee has
a noble verse relating to the stones of Emania, the finest, perhaps, in the
whole Saltair na rann, " Emania's palace has vanished, yet its stones still
remain, but the Rome of the western world is now Glendaloch of the
gatherings," " is Ruam iarthair beatha Gleann dalach da locha."
2 Sec " Silva Gadelica," p. in, and O'Curry's MS. Materials, p. 595.
3 Aibhinn in tech in ata,
Idir fira is maca is mna, f
Idir dhruidh ocus aes ceoil,
Idir dhailiumh is dhoirseoir.
EARLY IRISH CIVILISATION 131
Between equerries without fear,
And distributors who divide [the fare],
And, over all these, the command belongs
To Crede of the yellow hair.
The colour [of her house] is like the colour of lime,
Within it are couches and green rushes (?)
Within it are silks and blue mantles,
Within it are red, gold, and crystal cups.
Of its many chambers the corner stones,
Are all of silver and yellow gold,
In faultless stripes its thatch is spread,
Of wings of brown, and of crimson red.
Two door posts of green I see,
Door not devoid of beauty,
Of carved silver, long has it been renowned,
In the lintel that is over the door.
Crede's chair is on your left hand,
The pleasantest of the pleasant it is,
All over, a blaze x of Alpine gold
At the foot of her beautiful couch.
A splendid couch in full array
Stands directly above the chair ;
It was made by Tulle in the East,
Of yellow gold and precious stones.
There is another bed on your right hand
Of gold and silver without defect,
With curtains with soft [pillows],
With graceful rods of golden-bronze.
An hundred feet spans Crede's house
From one angle to the other,
And twenty feet are fully measured
In the breadth of its noble door.
Its portico is covered, too,
With wings of birds, both yellow and blue,
Its lawn in front and its well
Of crystal and of Carmogel."
1 Thus O'Curry translates casair as if he had taken it to be lasair.
O'Grady translates " an overlay of Elpa's gold."
132 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
The houses of the ancient Irish were either like Cormac's
banqueting-hall and Crede's house, built quadrilaterally of
felled trees or split planks planted upright in the earth, and
thatched overhead, or else, as was most usually the case, they
were cylindrical and made of wickerwork, with a cup-shaped
roof, plastered with clay and whitewashed. The magnificent
dimensions of Cormac's palace, verified as they are by the
careful measurements of the Ordnance Survey — a palace
certainly erected in pagan times, since Tara was deserted for
ever about the year 550 — bear evidence, like our wealth of
beautifully-wrought gold ornaments, and the superior work-
manship of our surviving articles of bronze and clay, to a high
degree of civilisation and culture amongst the pre-Christian
Irish ; I have here adduced them as bearing indirect evidence
in favour of the probability that a people so civilised would
have been likely to have seized on the invention of writing
when they first came in contact with it, and would have kept
their annals and genealogies all the more accurately from the
very fact that they were evidently so advanced in other
matters.
CHAPTER XIII
ST. PATRICK AND THE EARLY MISSIONARIES
EVEN supposing the Ogam alphabet to have been used in
pre-Christian times, though it may have been employed by
ollavs and poets to perpetuate tribal names and genealogies,
still it was much too cumbrous and clumsy an invention to
produce anything deserving the name of real literature. It is, ,
so far as we know, only with the coming of Patrick that i
Ireland may be said to have become, properly speaking, a j
literary country. The churches and monasteries established
by him soon became so many nuclei of learning, and from
the end of the fifth century a knowledge of letters seems to |
have entirely permeated the island. So suddenly does this
appear to have taken place, and so rapidly does Ireland seem
to have produced a flourishing literature of laws, poems, and
sagas, that it is very hard to believe that the inhabitants
had not, before his coming, arrived at a high state of
indigenous culture. This aspect of the case has been
recently strongly put by Dr. Sigerson. " I assert," said
he, speaking of the early Brehon laws, at the revision of
which in a Christian sense St. Patrick is said to have
assisted, " that, speaking biologically, such laws could not
133
134 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
emanate from any race whose brains have not been subject to
the quickening influence of education for many generations." T
The usual date assigned for St. Patrick's landing in Ireland
in the character of a missionary is 432, and his work among
the Irish is said to have lasted for sixty yearsy during which
time he broke down the idol Crom Cruach, burnt the
books of the druids at Tara, ordained numerous missionaries
and bishops, and succeeded in winning over to Christianity
a great number of the chiefs and sub-kings, who were in their
turn followed by their tribesmen.
St. Patrick did not work alone, nor did he come to Ireland
as a solitary pioneer of a new religion ; he was accompanied,
as we learn from his life in the Book of Armagh, by a
multitude of bishops, priests, deacons, readers, and others,2
who had crossed over along with him for the service. Several
were his own blood relations, one was his sister's son. Many
likely youths whom he met on his missionary travels he con-
verted to Christianity, taught to read, tonsured, and afterwards
ordained. These new priests thus appointed worked in all
directions, establishing churches and getting together congre-
gations from amongst the neighbouring heathen. Unable to
give proper attention to the teaching of the youths whom he
elected as his helpers, so long as he himself was engaged in
journeying through Ireland from point to point, he, after about
twenty years of peripatetic teaching, established at Armagh
about the year 450 the first Christian school ever founded in
Ireland, the progenitor of that long line of colleges which made
Ireland famous throughout Europe, and to which, two hundred
years later, her Anglo-Saxon neighbours flocked in thousands. 3
1 " Contemporary Review."
2 So Tirechan, in Book of Armagh, fol. 9. " Et secum fuit multitude
episcoporum sanctorum et presbiterorum, et diaconorum, ac exorcis-
tarum, hostiarium, lectorumque, necnon filiorum quos ordinavit."
3 So many English were attracted to Armagh in the seventh century
that the city was divided into three wards, or thirds, one of which was
called the Saxon Third.
ST. PATRICK AND EARLY MISSIONARIES 135
The equipments of these newly-made priests was of the
scantiest. Each, as he was sent forth, received an alphabet-
of-the-faith or elementary-explanation of the Christian doc-
trine, frequently written by Patrick himself, a "Liber ordinis,"
or " Mass Book," a written form for the administration of
the sacraments, a psaltery, and, if it could be spared, a copy of
the Gospels.1 A good-sized retinue followed Patrick in all his
journeyings, ready to supply with their own hands all things
necessary for the new churches established by the saint, as
well as to minister to his own wants. He travelled with his
episcopal coadjutor, his psalm-singer, his assistant priest, his
judge — originally a Brehon by profession, whom he found most
useful in adjudicating on disputed questions — a personal cham-
pion to protect him from sudden attack and to carry him
through floods and other obstacles, an attendant on himself,
a bellringer, a cook, a brewer, a chaplain at the table, two
waiters, and others who provided food and accommodation for
himself and his household. He had in his company three
smiths, three artificers, and three ladies who embroidered.
His smiths and artificers made altars, book-covers, bells, and
helped to erect his wooden churches ; the ladies, one of them
his own sister, made vestments and altar linens.2
St. Patrick was essentially a man of work and not of letters,
and yet it so happens that he is the earliest Irish writer of
whom we can say with confidence that what is ascribed to him
is really his. And here it is as well to say something about
the genuineness of St. Patrick's personality and the authen-
ticity of his writings, for the opinion started by Ledwich has
gone abroad, and has somehow become prevalent, that St.
Patrick's personality is nearly as nebulous as that of King
Arthur or of Finn mac Cumhail, and at the best is made up of
a number of little Patricks lumped into one great one. That
1 See Dr. Healy's " Ireland's Ancient Schools and Scholars," p. 64.
2 There is a curious poem on St. Patrick's family of artificers quoted in
the " Four Masters " under A.D. 278.
136 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
there was more than one Patrick * is certain,2 and that the
great Saint Patrick who wrote the "Confession" may have got
credit in the early Latin and later Irish lives for the acts of
others, is perfectly possible, but that most of the essential
features of his life are true, is beyond all doubt, and we
have a manuscript 1091 years old, apparently copied from
his own handwriting, and containing his own confession and
apologia.
How this exquisite manuscript, consisting of 21 6 vellum
leaves, written in double columns, has happily been preserved
to us, we shall not lose time in inquiring ; but how its exact
date has been ascertained through what Dr. Reeves has charac-
terised as "one of the most elegant and recondite demonstrations
1 There were no less than twenty-two saints of the name of Colum, yet
that does not detract one iota from the genuineness of the life of the great
Colum, called Columcille. There were fourteen St. Brendans, there
were twenty-five St. Ciarans, and fifteen St. Brigits.
How Ledwich — who, however, as O' Donovan remarks, looks at every-
thing Irish with a jaundiced eye — could have written down St. Patrick
as a myth is inconceivable, in the face of the fact that he was already
recognised in the sixth century as a great saint. The earliest mention of
him' is probably St. Columba's subscription to the Book of Durrow, in
the sixth century, which runs : "Rogo beatitudinem tuam Sancte Presbyter
Patrici, ut quicumque hunc libellum manu tenuerit Columbse Scriptoris,
qui hoc scripsi . . . met evangelium per xii. dierum spatium." Here we
see a prayer already addressed to him as a national saint.
- This is clearly shown by the 56th chap, of Tirechan's life fol. i6aa
of the Book of Armagh, where he makes the following statement :
"XIII. Anno Teothosii imperatoris a Celestino episcopo papa Romae
Patricius episcopus ad doctrinam Scottorum mittitur. Qui Celestinus
XLVII episcopus fuit a Petro apostolo in urbe Roma. Paladius episcopus
primus mittitur [in the year 430, according to Bede] qui Patricius alio
nomine appellabatur, qui martirium passus est apud Scottos, ut tradunt
sancti antiqui. Deinde Patricius secundus ab anguelo Dei, Victor nomine,
et a Celestino papa mittitur, cui Hibernia tota credidit, qui earn pene
totam bab [titzavit] ." Also it is to be observed that St. Patrick's life
according to the usual computations, covers 120 years, which seems an
improbably long period. According to the Brussels Codex of Muirchu
Maccu Machteni's life, he died a passiom Domini nostri 436 ; the author, no
doubt, imagined the passion to have taken place in A.D. 34 ; this would fix
Patrick's death as in 470. See p. 20 of Father Hogan's " Documenta
ex Libro Armachano," and with this Tirechan also agrees, saying
ST. PA TRICK AND EARL Y MISSIONARIES 137
which any learned society has on record, is worth mentioning."
The Rev. Charles Graves, the present Bishop of Limerick,
made a thorough examination of the whole codex when, after
many vicissitudes and hair-breadth escapes from destruction, it
had been temporarily deposited in the Royal Irish Academy.
Knowing, as O'Curry pointed out, that it was the custom for
Irish scribes to sign their own names, with usually some par-
ticulars about their writing, at the end of each piece they
copied, he made a careful search and discovered that this
had actually been done in the Book of Armagh, and in
no less than eight places, but that on every spot where it
occurred it had been erased for some apparently inscrutable
reason, with the greatest pains. In the last place but one,
"A passione autem christi colleguntur anni ccccxxxvi. usque ad
mortem Patricii." Tirechan curiously contradicts himself in saying,
" Duobus autem vel v annis regnavit Loiguire post mortem Patricii, omnis
autem regni illius tempus xxxvi. ut putamus," in chap, ii., and in chap,
liii. he says that Patrick taught (i.e., in Ireland) for 72 years ! He
evidently compiled badly from two different documents.
The only cogent reason for doubting about the reality of St. Patrick is
that he is not mentioned in the Chronicon of Prosper, which comes down
to the year 455, and which ascribes the conversion of Ireland to Palladius,
as does Bede afterwards. It is the silence of Prosper and Bede about
any one of the name of Patrick which has cast doubt upon his existence.
A most ingenious theory has been propounded by Father E. O'Brien in
the " Irish Ecclesiastical Record " to explain this. According to him Patrick
is the Palladius of Prosper and Bede. The earliest lives, and the scholiast
on Fiacc's hymn, tell us that Patrick had four names ; one of these was
Succat " qui est deus belli," but Palladius is the Latin of Patrick's name
(succat). The Dens belli could only be rendered into Latin by the words
Arius Martius or Palladius, these being the only names drawn from war-
gods, and. of these Palladius was the commonest. It seems not unlikely
that the Patrick who wrote the " Confession" and converted Ireland is the
Palladius of Bede and Prosper, who also converted Ireland. The Paladius
of Tirechan who failed to convert Ireland is evidently another person
altogether.
It is to be remarked that although Bede never mentions Patrick in his
"Ecclesiastical History," nevertheless in the " Martyrology " — found by
Mabillon at Rheims, and attributed to Bede, Patrick is distinctly com-
memorated—
" Patricius Domini servus conscendit ad aulam,
Cuthbertus ternas tenuit denasque Kalendas."
138 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
however, where the colophon occurred, the process of erasure
had been less thorough than in the others, and after long con-
sideration, and treatment of the erasure with gallic acid and
spirits of wine, Dr. Graves discovered that the words so care-
fully rubbed out were Pro Ferdomnacho ores, " Pray for Fer-
domnach." Turning to the other places, he found that the
erased words in at least one other place were evidently the
same. This settled the name of the scribe ; he was Ferdom-
nach. The next step was to search the " Four Masters," who
record the existence of two scribes of that name who died at
Armagh, one in 726 and the other in 844. One of these it
must have been who wrote the Book of Armagh, — but
which ? This also Dr. Graves discovered, with the greatest
ingenuity. At the foot of Fols. 52-6 he was, with extreme
difficulty, able to decipher the words . . . ach hunc . . .
e dictante . . . ach herede Patridi scrtpsit. From these stray
syllables he surmised that Ferdomnach had written the book
at the bidding of some Archbishop of Armagh whose name
ended in ach. For this the Psalter of Cashel, Leabhar Breac,
and " Four Masters," were consulted, and it was found that
one Archbishop Senaach died in 609 ; it could not then have
been by his commands the book was written by the first
Ferdomnach ; then came, after a long interval, Faoindea-
lach, who died in 794, Connmach, who died in 806,
and Torbach, who held the primacy for one year after
him. On examining the hiatus it was found that the
letter which preceded the fragment ach could not have been
either an / or an m, but might have been a by thus putting out
of the question the names of Connmach and Faoindealach.
Besides the vacant space before the ach was just sufficient to
admit of the letters T0r, but not Conny much less Faoindea.
The conclusion was obvious : the passage ran, Ferdomnach
hunc librum e dictante Torbach herede Patricii scripsit, "Fer-
domnach wrote this book at the dictation (or command) of
Torbach, Patrick's heir (successor)." Torbach, as we have
ST. PA TRICK AND EARL Y MISSIONARIES 139
seen, became Archbishop in 806 and died in 807. The date
was in this way recovered.1
I have been thus particular in tracing the steps by which
the age of this manuscript came to light, because it contains the
earliest piece of certain Irish literature we have, the "Confession
of St. Patrick." Now the usually accepted date of St. Patrick's
death, as given in the Annals of Ulster, is 4.92, about three hundred
years before that, and Ferdomnach, the scribe, after copying it,
added these words : " Hue usque volumen quod patricius manu
comer ipsit sua. Septimadecima martil die translate est patricius ad
ceelosy i.e., " thus far the volume which Patrick wrote with his own
hand. On the seventeenth day of March was Patrick translated
to the heavens." It would appear highly probable from this
that Ferdomnach actually copied from St. Patrick's autograph,2
which had become so defaced or faded during the three previous
centuries, that the scribe has written in many places incertus
liber hie, " the book is uncertain here," or else put a note 3 of
1 For the full particulars of this acute discovery, which sets the date of
the codex beyond doubt or cavil, see Dr. Graves' paper read before the
Royal Irish Academy, vol. iii. pp. 316-324, and a supplementary paper
giving other cogent reasons, vol. iii. p. 358. According to O'Donovan, the
" Four Masters " antedate here by five years. It is worth remarking that
Torbach, who caused this copy to be made, was himself a noted scribe.
His death in 807 is recorded in the " Four Masters" and in the "Annals
of Ulster," we read " Torbach, son of Gorman, scribe, lector, and Abbot of
Armagh, died."
2 There are several passages omitted in the Book of Armagh, which
are found in an ancient Brussels MS. of the eleventh century. These were
probably omitted from the Book of Armagh because they were unde-
cipherable. The Brussels MS. and others contain nearly as much again as it,
and there are many proofs that this extra matter is not of later or spurious
origin ; thus Tirechan refers to Patrick's own records, "ut in scriptionesua
affirmai" for evidence of a fact not mentioned in the " Confession" as given
in the Book of Armagh, but which is supplied by the other MSS., namely, that
Patrick paid the price of fifteen " souls of men," or slaves, for protection
on his missionary journey across Ireland. The frequent occurrence of
dcest, et cetera, et rdiqua, show that the Armagh copy of the ''Confession"
is nothing like a full one. The Brussels MS. formerly belonged to the
Irish monastery of Wurzburg.
3 See p. 36, note 2.
140 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
interrogation to indicate that he was not sure whether he had
copied the text correctly. It will be seen from this that there
was not the slightest trace of any concealment on the part of
the scribe as to who he himself was, or what he was copying ;
there was no attempt to antedate his own writing, or to
suggest that his copy was an original. But long after the
scribe's generation had passed away and the origin of his work
been forgotten, the volume which at first had been regarded
only as a fine transcript of early documents, became known as
"Canon Phadraig," or Patrick's Testament, and popular
opinion, relying on the colophon " thus far the book which
Patrick wrote with his own hand," set down the work as the
saint's autograph. The belief that the volume was St.
Patrick's own autograph of course enhanced enormously its
value, and with it the dignity of its possessors, and the
unscrupulous plan was resolved on of erasing the signature of
the actual scribe. The veneration of the public was thus
secured by interested persons at the cost of truth, and the
deception probably lasted so long as the possession of such
a volume brought with it either credit or dignity. This same
volume * has another interest attaching to it, so that we
cannot but felicitate ourselves that out of the wreck of so
many thousands of volumes, it has been spared to us — it was
brought to Brian Boru, when in the year 1004 he went upon
his royal progress through Ireland, the first man of the race
of Eber who had attained the proud position of monarch
or Ard-righ for many centuries, and he, by the hand of
his secretary, made an entry which may still be seen to-
day, confirming the primacy of Armagh, and re-granting to it
1 The other contents of the Book of Armagh, besides the Patrician
documents, are a copy of the New Testament, enriched with concordance
tables and illustrative matter from Jerome, Hilary, and Pelagius. It
includes the Epistle to the Laodiceans attributed to St. Paul, but it is j
mentioned that Jerome denied its authenticity. There are some pieces
relating to St. Martin of Tours, and the Patrician pieces — the Life, the
Collectanea, the Book of the Angel, and the " Confession."
ST. PATRICK AND EARLY MISSIONARIES 141
the episcopal supremacy of Ireland which it had always
enjoyed.1
It is now time to glance at St. Patrick's " Confession," as it
is usually called, though in reality it is much more of the
nature of an apologia pro vita sua. The evidence in favour of
its authenticity is overwhelming, and is accepted by such
cautious scholars as Stokes,2 Todd, and Reeves, no first-rate
critic, with perhaps one exception, having so far as I know
ever ventured to question its genuineness. It is impossible to
assign any motive for a forgery, and casual references to
Decuriones, Slave-traffic, and to the " Brittaniae," or Britains,
bear testimony to its antiquity. Again, the Latin in which it
is written is barbarous in the extreme, the periods are rude,
sometimes ungrammatical, often nearly unintelligible. He
begins by telling us that his object in writing this confession
in his old age was to defend himself from the charge of
presumptuousness in undertaking the work he tried to perform
amongst the Irish. He tells us that he had many toils and
perils to surmount, and much to endure while engaged upon
it. He never received one farthing for all his preaching and
teaching. The people indeed were generous, and offered
many gifts, and cast precious things upon the altar, but he
would not receive them lest he might afford the unrighteous
an occasion to cavil. He was still encompassed about with
dangers, but he heeded them not, looking to the success which
had attended his efforts, how " the sons of the Scots and the
1 " Sanctus Patricus iens ad ccelum mandavit totum fructum laboris sui
tarn baptism! tarn causarum quam elemoisinarum deferendum esse
apostolicse urbi quae scotice nominatur ardd-macha. Sic reperi in Biblio-
thics Scotorum. Ego scripsi, id est Caluus Perennis, in conspectu Briain
imperatoris Scotorum, et quod scripsi finituit pro omnibus regibus Maceriae
[i.e., Cashel]." " Calvus Perennis " is the Latin translation of Mael-suthain,
Brian's scribe and secretary. For a curious story about this Mael-suthain,
see p. 779 O'Curry's MS. Materials.
3 See above p. 112, note 2. It has been printed in Haddan and Stubb's,
" Councils," etc., vol. ii. p. 296, and also admirably in Gilbert's facsimiles
of National MSS.
I42 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
daughters of their princes became monks and virgins of Christ,"
and "the number of holy widows and of continent maidens was
countless." It would be tedious were he to recount even a
portion of what he had gone through. Twelve times had his
life been endangered, but God had rescued him, and brought
him safe from all plots and ambuscades and rewarded him for
leaving his parents, and friends, and country, heeding neither
their prayers nor their tears, that he might preach the gospel
in Ireland. He appeals to all he had converted, and to all who
knew him, to say whether he had not refused all gifts — nay, it
was he himself who gave the gifts, to the kings and to their
sons, and oftentimes was he robbed and plundered of everything,
and once had he been bound in fetters of iron for fourteen days
until God had delivered him, and even still while writing this !
confession he was living in poverty and misery, expecting
death or slavery, or other evil. He prays earnestly for one j
thing only, that he may persevere, and not lose the people
whom God has given to him at the very extremity of the j
world.
Unhappily this " Confession" is a most unsatisfying composi- j
tion, for it omits to mention almost everything of most interest j
relating to the saint himself and to his mission. What floods
of light might it have thrown upon a score of vexed questions, j
how it might have set at rest for ever theories on druidism, j
kingship, social life, his own birthplace, his mission from Rome,1]
his captors. Even of himself he tells us next to nothing,?
except that his father's name was Calpornus, 2 the son ofi
1 It has often been said that the life of the saint in the Book of Armagh ,
ignores the Roman Mission. But while the life of Muirchu Maccu \
Machteni does ignore it, Tirechan's his contemporary's, life, in the same s
book, distinctly acknowledges it, in these words, "deinde Patricius se-j
cundus ab anguelo dei, Victor nomine, et a Celestino papa mittitur cui
Hibernia tola credidit, qui earn pene totam bap[titzavit]." (See chap. 56 ofi
Tirechan's life.)
2 In Irish he is usually called Son of Alprann or Alplann, the C of:
Calpornus being evidently taken as belonging to the Mac, thus Mac Cal-;j
prainn became Mac Alprainn. In the Brussels Codex of Muirchu Maccu !
ST. PATRICK AND EARLY MISSIONARIES 143
Potitus, the son of Odissus, a priest, and that he dwelt in the
vicus or township of Benaven Taberniae ; he had also a small
villa not far off, where he tells us he was made captive at
the age of about sixteen years. Because his Christian training
was bad, and he was not obedient to the priests when they
admonished him to seek for salvation, therefore God punished
him, and brought him into captivity in a strange land at the
end of the world. When he was brought to Ireland he tells
us that his daily task was to feed cattle, and then the love of
God entered into his heart, and he used to rise before the sun
and pray in the woods and mountains, in the rain, the hail, and
the snow. Then there came to him one night a voice in his
sleep saying to him " Your ship is ready," and he departed and
went for two hundred miles, until he reached a port where
he knew no one. This was after six years' captivity. The
master of the ship would not take him on board, but afterwards
he relented just as Patrick was about to return to the cottage
where he had got lodging. He succeeded at last in reaching
the home of his parents in 'Britannls [i.e., in some part of
Britain, including Scotland], and his parents besought him,
now that he had returned from so many perils, to remain with
them always. But the angel Victor came in the guise of a
man from Ireland, and gave him a letter, in which the voice of
the Irish called him away, and the voices of those who dwelt
near the wood of Focluth called him to walk amongst them,
and the spirit of God, too, urged him to return.1
Machteni's life, however, he is called Alforni filius, and the place of his
birth is called Ban navem thabur indecha, supposed to be Killpatrick, near
Dumbarton, in Scotland, which is evidently a corruption of his own
Bannaven Taberniae, which seems to mean River-head Tavern ; it may be
from the two words navem thabur that St. Fiacc's hymn says that he was
born in nemthur. Patrick himself only gives us two generations of his
ancestry, and it is very significant of Irish ways to find Flann of
Monasterboice, running it up to fourteen !
1 It is worth while to transcribe this passage as a fair specimen of St.
Patrick's style and latinity. " Et ibi scilicet in sinu noctis virum venientem
quasi de Hiberione cui nomen Victoricus, cum sepistulis innumerabilibus
144 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
He says nothing of his training, or his ordination, or his long
sojourn in Gaul, or of St. Germanus, with whom he studied
according to the " Lives," but he alludes incidentally to his
wish to see his parents and his native Britain, and to revisit the
brethren in Gaul, and to see the face of God's saints there ; but
though he desired all this, he would not leave his beloved
converts, but would spend the rest of his life amongst them.1
From this brief resume of the celebrated "Confession" it will
be seen that it is the perfervid outpouring of a zealous early
Christian, anxious only to clear himself from the charges of
worldliness or carelessness, and absolutely devoid of those
appeals to general interest which we meet with in most of
such memoirs, but there is a vein of warm piety running
through the whole, and an abundance of scriptural quotations
— all, of course, from the ante-Hieronymian or pre-Vulgate
version, another proof of antiquity — which has caused it to be
remarked that a forger might, perhaps, write equally bad Latin,
but could hardly "forge the spirit that breathes in the language
which is the manifest outpourings of a heart like unto the
heart of St. Paul." 2
There are two other pieces of literature assigned to St.
Patrick, as well as the " Confession " ; these are the " Epistle to
Coroticus " in Latin, and the " Deer's Cry " in Irish. Tl
vidi ; et dedit mihi unam ex his et legi principium sepistolae continental
' Uox Hiberionacum.' Et dum recitabam principium aepistolae, putabai
enim ipse in mente audire vocem ipsorum qtii erant juxta silvam Foclut
[in the county Mayo] quae est prope mare occidentale. Et sic exclam-
averunt : ' Rogamus te sancte puer ut venias et adhuc ambulas inter nos.'
Et valde compunctus sum corde, et amplius non potui legere. Et sic
expertus {i.e. experrectus] sum. Deo gratias quia post plurimos ann<
prsestitit illis Dominus secundum clamorum illorum " (Folio 23, 66, Bool
of Armagh, p. 126 of Father Hogan's Bollandist edition).
1 The " Confession " ends with a certain rough eloquence : " Christi
Dominus pauper fuit pro nobis ; ego vero miser et infelix, et si
voluero jam non habeo ; neque me ipsum judico quia quotidie spero aut
internicionem aut circumveniri, aut redigi in servitatem, sive occassic
cujus-libet. . . Et haec est confessio mea antequam moriar."
2 Dr. Healy's " Ireland's Ancient Schools and Scholars," p. 68.
ST. PATRICK AND EARLY MISSIONARIES 145
Epistle is not found in the Book of Armagh, but it is found
in other MSS. as old as the tenth or eleventh century, and
bears such close resemblance in style and language to the
" Confession," whole phrases actually occurring in both, that it
also has generally been regarded as genuine.1 There is some
doubt as to who Coroticus was, but he seems to have been a
semi-Christian king of Dumbarton who, along with some Scots,
i.e., Irish, and the Southern Picts who had fallen away from
Christianity, raided the eastern shores of Ireland and carried
off a number of St. Patrick's newly-converted Christians,
leaving the white garments of the neophytes stained with
blood, and hurrying into captivity numbers upon whose fore-
heads the holy oil of confirmation was still glistening. The
first letter was to ask Coroticus to restore the captives, and
when this request was derided the next was sent, excommuni-
cating him and all his aiders and abettors, calling upon all
Christians neither to eat nor drink in their company until
they had made expiation for their crimes. Patrick himself
had, he here explains, preached the gospel to the Irish nation
for the sake of God, though they had made him a captive and
destroyed the men-servants and maids of his father's house.
He had been born a freedman and a noble, the son of a
decurio or prefect, but he had sold his nobility for others and
regretted it not. His lament over the loss of his converts is
touching : " Oh ! my most beautiful and most loving brothers
and children whom in countless numbers I have begotten in
Christ, what shall I do for you ? Am I so unworthy before
God and men that I cannot help you ? Is it a crime to have
been born in Ireland ? 2 And have we not the same God as
they have ? I sorrow for you, yet I rejoice, for if ye are taken
from the world ye are believers through me, and are gone to
Paradise."
1 It is printed by Haddan and Stubbs, " Councils," etc., vol. ii. p. 314.
2 This is certainly the first time on record that this question— so often
repeated since in so many different forms — was asked.
K
146 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
The "Cry of the Deer," or "Lorica," as it is also called, is in
Irish. The saint is said to have made it when on his way to
visit King Laoghaire [Leary] at Tara, and the assassins who
had been planted by the king to slay him and his companions
thought as he chanted this hymn that it was a herd of deer
that passed them by, and thus they escaped. The metre of
the original is a kind of unrhymed or half-rhymed rhapsody,
called in Irish a Rosg, and is perfectly unadorned. The
language, however, though very old, has of course been
modified in the process of transcription. Patrick calls upon
the Trinity to protect him that day at Tara, and to bind to
him the power of the elements.
I bind me to-day x
God's might to direct me,
God's power to protect me,
God's wisdom for learning,
God's eye for discerning,
God's ear for my hearing,
God's word for my clearing,
God's hand for my cover,
God's path to pass over,
God's buckler to guard me,
God's army to ward me,
Against snares of the devils,
Against vices, temptations,
1 See the original in Windsch's " Irische Texte," I. p. 53, and Todd's
" Liber Hymnorum " —
" Atomrigh indiu niurt De dom luamaracht
Cumachta De dom chumgabail
Ciall De domm imttms
Rose De dom reimcise,
Cluas De dom estecht
Briathar De dom erlabrai,
Lam De domm imdegail
Intech De dom remthechtas.
Sciath De dom ditin
Sochraite De domm anucul
Ar intledaib demna
Ar aslaigthib dualche
Ar cech nduine miduthrastar dam,
icein ocus i n-ocus
i n-uathed ocus hi sochaide," etc.
ST. PATRICK AND EARLY MISSIONARIES 147
Against wrong inclinations,
Against men who plot evils
To hurt me anew,
Anear or afar with many or few.
Christ near, Christ here,
Christ be with me,
Christ beneath me,
Christ within me,
Christ behind me,
Christ be o'er me,
Christ before me,
Christ in the left and the right,
Christ hither and thither,
Christ in the sight,
Of each eye that shall seek me," * etc.
In the Book ot Armagh, in the last chapter of Tirechan's
life, St. Patrick is declared to be entitled to four honours in
every church and monastery of the island. One of these
honours was that the hymn written by St. Seachnall, his
nephew, in praise of himself, was to be sung in the churches
during the days when his festival was being celebrated, and
another was that " his Irish canticle " was to be always sung,2
apparently all the year through, in the liturgy, but perhaps only
during the week of his festival. The Irish canticle is evidently
1 Thus translated almost literally by Dr. Sigerson, " Bards of the Gael
and Gall," p. 138. This is not the only poem attributed to St. Patrick,
several others are ascribed to him in the "Tripartite Life," and a MS. in the
Bibliotheque Royale contains three others. Eight lines of one of them is
found in the Vatican Codex of Mananus .Scotus and are given by Zeuss
in his " Grammatica Celtica," p. 961, second edition. The lines there given
refer to St. Brigit. There is also a rann attributed to St. Patrick quoted
by the "Four Masters," and the "Chronicon Scotorum" attributes to him a
rann on Bishop Ere.
2 " Canticum ejus scotticum semper canere," which a marginal note in
the book explains as Ymnns Comanulo, which Father Hogan interprets as
proteciio Clamoris, adding "ac proinde synonymavoci Faith Fiada," which
has been interpreted clamor cnstodis or "The Guardsman's Cry " by Stokes.
The poem, then, was extant in the seventh century, was attributed to St.
itrick, and was sung in the churches — a strong argument for its
thenticity.
148 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
this " Lorica," which was, as we see from this notice in the
Book of Armagh, believed to be his in the seventh century,
and it has been sung under that belief from that day almost to
our own.1
The other hymn, the singing of which at his festival is
alluded to as one of St. Patrick's " honours," was composed
by Seachnall [Shaughnal],2 a nephew of St. Patrick's, in lauda-
tion of the saint himself. It is a very interesting piece of
rough latinity, and is generally regarded as genuine. The
occasion of its composition deserves to be told, for it casts a
ray of light on the prudential and self-restrained side of St.
Patrick's character, which no doubt contributed largely to his
success when working in the midst of his wavering converts.
Seachnall said that Patrick's preaching would be perfect if he
only insisted a little more on the necessity of giving, for then
more property and land would be at the disposal of the Church
for pious uses. This remark of his nephew was repeated to
St. Patrick, who was very much annoyed at it, and said
beautifully, that " for the sake of charity he forbore to preach
charity," and intimated that the holy men who should come
after him might benefit by the offerings of the faithful which
he had left untouched. Then Seachnall, grieved at having
thus pained his uncle, and anxious to win his regard again,
1 " Even to this day," says Dr. Healy, in " Ireland's Ancient Schools and
Scholars," p. 77, " the original is chanted by the peasantry of the south
and west in the ancestral tongue, and it is regarded as ;i strong shield
against all dangers natural or supernatural." I, myself, however, in
collecting the " Religious Songs of Connacht," have found no trace of this,
and I am not sure that the learned Bishop of Clonfert, led astray by
Petrie, is not here confounding it with the " Marainn Phadraig," which
mysterious piece is implicitly believed to be the work of St. Patrick,
and is still recited all over the west, with the belief that there is a peculiar
virtue attached to it. I have even known money to have been paid for its
recital in the west of Gal way, as a preventive of evil. For this curious
piece, which is to me at least more than half unintelligible, see my
' Religious Songs of Connacht." It appears to have been founded upon
an incident similar to that recorded by Muirchu Maccu Machteni, book
. chap. 26.
2 Of Dunshaughlin recte Dunsaughnil (Domhnach Seachnaill) in Meath.
ST. PATRICK AND EARLY MISSIONARIES 149
composed a poem of twenty-two stanzas each beginning with a
different letter, with four lines of fifteen syllables in each verse.1
When he had done this he asked permission of Patrick to
recite to him a poem which he had composed in praise of a
holy man, and when Patrick said that he would gladly hear
the praises of any of God's household, the poet adroitly
suppressing Patrick's name which occurs in the first verse,
recited it for him. Patrick was pleased, but interupted the
poet at one stanza when he said that the subject of his lauda-
tions was maximus in regno cezlorumf "the greatest in the
kingdom of heaven," asking how could that be said of any
1 As this was probably the first poem in Latin ever composed in Ireland,
it deserves some consideration. It is a sort of trochaic tetrameter cata-
lectic, of the very rudest type. The ictus, or stress of the voice, which is
supposed to fall on the first syllable of the first, third, fifth, and seventh
feet, seldom corresponds with the accent. The elision of "m" before a vowel
is disregarded, no quantities are observed, and the solitary rule of prosody
kept is that the second syllable of the seventh foot is always short, with
the exception of one word, indutus, which the poet probably pronounced
as indiitus. The third verse runs thus, with an evident effort at vowel
rhyme (" Liber Hymnorum," vol. i. p. n).
"Beati Christi custodit mandata in omnibus
Cujus opera refulgent clara inter homines."
Muratori printed this hymn, from the so-called Antiphonary of Bangor,
a MS. of the eight century preserved in the Ambrosian Library. The
rude metre is that employed by Hilary in his hymn beginning —
" Ymnum dicat turba fratrum, ymnum cantus personet,"
which, as Stokes points out, is the same as that of the Roman soldiers,
preserved in Suetonius,
" Cassar Gallias subegit, Nicomedes Caesarem."
The internal evidence of the antiquity of this hymn is " strong," says
Stokes, "first, the use of the present tense in describing the saint's actions ;
secondly, the absence of all reference to the miracles with which the
Tripartite and other lives are crowded ; and, thirdly, the absence of all
allusion to the Roman mission on which many later writers from Tirechan
downwards insist with much persistency." We may then, I think, receive
this hymn as authentic.
2 " Maximus namque in regno caslorum vocabitur,
§ui quod verbis docet sacris factis adimplet bonis ;
ono procedit exemplo formamque fidelium
Mundoque in corde habet ad Deum fiduciam."
ISO LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
man. Maximusy ingeniously replied Seachnall, does not here
mean "greatest," but only "very great." He then disclosed to
his uncle that he himself was the object of the poem, and
asked — like all bards — for the reward for it, whereupon Patrick
promised that to all who recited the hymn piously morning
and evening, God in His mercy might give the glory of
heaven. "I am content with that award," said the poet, "but
as the hymn is long and difficult to be remembered I wish you
would obtain the same reward for whosoever recites even a part
of it." Whereupon St. Patrick promised that the recitation
of the last three verses would be sufficient, and his nephew
was satisfied, having proved himself the first poet of Christian
Ireland, and having obtained such a reward for his verses as
neither bard nor ollav had ever obtained before him. It was
probably this same Seachnall who was the author of the much
finer hymn of eleven verses which used to be sung in the old
Irish churches at communion —
" Sancti venite
Christ! corpus sumitc,
Sanctum bibentes
Quo redempti sanguinem.
Salvati Christ!
Corpore et sanguine,
A quo refect!
Laudes dicamus Deo.
Hoc sacramento
Corporis et sanguinis
Omnes exuti
Ab inferni faucibus," etc.
The legend in the Leabhar Breac has it that this hymn was
first chanted during the holy communion by the angels in
his church, on the reconciliation between himself and Saint
Patrick, whence the origin of chanting it during the com-
munion service.
The Book of Armagh contains the two earliest lives of
the national saint that we have, probably the two earliest
ST. PATRICK AND EARLY MISSIONARIES 151
biographies of any size ever composed in Ireland. They are
written in rude Latin, with a good deal of Irish place-names
and Irish words intermixed, the first by one Muirchu Maccu
Machteni,1 who tells us that he wrote at the instigation of
Aed, bishop of Sletty, who, as we know from the " Four
Masters," died about 698, and the second by Tirechan, who
says he received his knowledge of the saint from the lips and
writings of Bishop Ultan,2 his tutor, who died in 656, and
who, supposing him to have been seventy or eighty years old
at the time of his death, must have been born only eighty or
ninety years after the death of St. Patrick himself. Both of
these writers appear to have had older memoirs to draw on,
for Muirchu says that many had before them endeavoured to
write the history of St. Patrick from what their fathers and
those who were ministers of the Word from the beginning
had told them, though none had ever succeeded in producing a
proper biography, 3 and in Tirechan's life of him in the Book
of Armagh — an evident patchwork — we read that all his
godly doings had been brought together 4 and collected by the
1 In the " Martyrology of Tallaght " this curious name is written Mac
hui Machteni, i.e., the son of the grandson of Machtenus, or Muirchu, i.e.,
Murrough, descendant of Machtenus, and the Leabhar Breac has this
note at the name of Muirchu : " civitas ejus in uib Foelan, i.e., mac hui
Mathcene," thereby giving us to understand that he was a native of what
is the present county of Waterford. Maccumachteni is not a surname,
for these were not introduced into Ireland for three centuries later.
2 " Omnia quse scripsi a principio libri hujus scitis quia in vestris
regionibus gesta sunt, nizi de eis pauca inveni in utilitatem laboris mei
a senioribus multis, ac ab illo Ultano episcopo Conchubernensi qui nutrivit
me, retulit sermo ! "
3 " Multos jam conatos esse ordinare narrationem istam secundum
quod patres eorum et qui ministri ab initio fuerunt sermonis tradiderunt
illis ; sed propter difficillimum narrationis opus diversasque opiniones et
plurimorum plurimas suspiciones nunquam ad unum certumque historiae
tramitem pervenisse."
4 "Omnia in Deo gesta ab antiquis peritissimis adunata atque collecta
sunt ; " and again : " Post e?dtum Patricii alumpni sui valde ejusdem libros
conscripserunt ; " but this may mean that they made copies of the books
left behind him.
152 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
most skilful of the ancients. The first of these lives consists
of two books containing twenty-eight and thirteen short
chapters, respectively, the second, Tirechan's, of one book
containing fifty-seven chapters, in addition to which there are
a number of minor notes referring to St. Patrick in Latin and
in Irish, which Ferdomnach, who transcribed the book in 807,
appears to have taken from other old lives or memoirs of
the saint. The Irish portions of these notes are of peculiar
interest, as showing what the Irish language was, as written
about the year 800. 1
If it is genuine the earliest life of Patrick ever written
would probably be the brief metrical life ascribed to Fiacc
of Sletty, the sixth or seventh in descent from Cathaoir
[Cauheer] Mor, who was king of Leinster at the close of
the second century.2 His mother was a sister of Dubhthach's
[Duv-hach], the chief poet and Brehon of Ireland, who, we are
told, helped St. Patrick to review and revise the Brehon Laws.
Fiacc was a youthful poet in Dubhthach's train at Tara.
Afterwards he was tonsured by St. Patrick, became Bishop
of Sletty, and on Patrick's death is said to have written
his life, and not forgetful of his former training, to have
written it in elaborate verse.3 So famous a critic as Zimmer
believed half the poem to be genuine, but Thurneysen rejects
1 Here is a specimen : " Dulluid patricc othemuir hicrich Laigen con-
rancatar ocus dubthach mucculugir uccdomnuch mar criathar la auu
censelich. Aliss patricc dubthach imdamnae .n. epscuip diadesciplib
dilaignib idon fer soer socheniuil cenon cenainim nadip ru becc nadi-
promar bedasommae, toisclimm fer oinsetche dunarructhae actoentuistiu,"
which would run some way thus in the modern language : " Do luid
(i.e., Chuaidh) Padraic 6 Theamhair i gcrich Laighean go rancadar [fein]
agus Dubhthach Mac Lugair ag Domhnach Mor Criathair le uibh Ceinn-
sealaigh. Ailis (i.e., fiafruighis) Padraic Dubhthach um damhna (i.e.,
adhbhar) easboig d' a dheiscioblaibh, eadhoin fear saor soi-chineail, gan
on gan ainimh (i.e., truailiughadh), nar 'bh ro bheag [agus] nar 'bh
romhor, a shaidhbhreas (?). Toisg [riachtanus] liom fear aon seitche
[mna] d'a nach rugadh acht aon tuistui (gein)," etc.
9 For Cathaoir Mor, see p. 30.
3 The metre was called Cctal nothi, Thurneysen's " Mittelirische Vers-
lehren," p. 63. It scarcely differs in most parts from Little Rannaigheacht.
ST. PATRICK AND EARLY MISSIONARIES 153
it because it does not fall in with his theories of Irish
metre.1
But the longest and most important life of St. Patrick
is that known as the Tripartite, or Triply-divided Life,
which is really a series of three semi-historical homilies, or
discourses, which were probably delivered in honour of the
saint on the three festival days devoted to his memory, that is,
the Vigil, the Feast itself, on March lyth, and the day after,
or else the Octave. This Tripartite life, which is a fairly
complete one, is written in ancient Irish, with many passages
of Latin interspersed. The monk Jocelin, who wrote a life
of the saint in the twelfth century, tells us that St. Evin2
—from whom Monasterevin, in Queen's County, is called,
a saint of the early sixth century — wrote a life of Patrick
partly in Latin and partly in Gaelic, and Colgan, the learned
Franciscan who translated the Tripartite in his "Trias
Thaumaturga," 3 believed that this was the very life which
St. Evin wrote. Colgan found the Tripartite life in three very
ancient Gaelic MSS., procured for him, no doubt, by the un-
wearied research of Brother Michael O'Clery in the early part of
the seventeenth century, which he collated one with the other,
and of which he gives the following noteworthy account : —
" The first thing to be observed is that it has been written by its
first author and in the aforesaid manuscript, partly in Latin, partly
1 See " Keltische Studien," Heft ii., and the " Revue Celtique." The
first verses run thus : —
" Genair Patraicc in Nemthur
Is ed atfet hi scelaib
Maccan se mbliadan deac
In tan dobreth fo deraib.
Succat a ainm itubrad
Ced a athair ba fissi
Mac Calpairn male Otide
Hoa deochain Odissi."
2 He was tenth in descent from that Owen Mor who wrested half the
sovereignty of Ireland from Conn, of the Hundred Battles.
3 I.e., " The wonder-working Three," containing the lives of Patrick,
Brigit, and Columcille, translated by Colgan from Irish into Latin.
154 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
in Gaelic, and this in very ancient language, almost impenetrable
by reason of its very great antiquity, exhibiting not only in the same
chapter, but also in the same line, alternate phrases now in the Latin,
now in the Gaelic tongue. In the second place, it is to be noticed
that this life, on account of the very great antiquity of its style,
which was held in much regard, used to be read in the schools of
our antiquarians in the presence of their pupils, being elucidated
and expounded by the glosses of the masters, and by interpretations
of and observations on the more abstruse words ; so that hence it
is not to be wondered at that some words — which certainly did
happen— gradually crept from these glosses into the texts, and thus
brought a certain colour of newness into this most ancient and
faithful author, some things being turned from Latin into Gaelic,
some abbreviated by the scribes, and some altogether omitted."
Colgan further tells us that, "of the three MSS. above
mentioned, the first and chief is from very ancient vellums of
the O'Clerys, antiquarians in Ulster ; the second from the
O'Deorans, of Leinster ; the third taken from I know not
what codex ; and they differ from each other in some respects ;
one relating more diffusely what is more close in the others,
and one relating in Latin what in the others was told in
Gaelic ; but we have followed the authority of that which
relates the occurrences more diffusely and in Latin." O'Curry
discovered in the British Museum a copy of this life, made in
the fifteenth century, and it has since been admirably edited by
Dr. Whitley Stokes, who, however, does not believe for philo-
logical and other reasons, that it could have been written before
the middle of the tenth century. If so it is no doubt a
compilation of all the pre-existing lives of the saint, and it
mentions distinctly that six different writers, not counting
Fiacc the poet, had collected the events of St. Patrick's life
and his miracles, amongst whom were St. Columcille, who
died in 592, and St. Ultan, who died in 656.! It is hardly
1 Also St. Aileran the Wise, whose " Fragments " are published by
Migne ; St. Adamnan, the author of the " Life of Columcille " ; St.
Ciaran of Belach-Duin ; and St. Colman. Jocelyn says that Benignus,
who died in 468, wrote another life of Patrick, but of it nothing is known.
ST. PATRICK AND EARLY MISSIONARIES 155
necessary, however, to say that in the matter of all anonymous
Gaelic writings like the present, it is difficult to decide with
any certainty as to age or date. The occurrence, indeed, of
very old forms, shows that the sentences containing those old
forms were first written at an early period ; the occurrence of
more modern forms, however, is no proof that the passages
containing them were first written in modern times, for the
words may have been altered by later transcribers into the
language they spoke themselves ; nor are allusions to events
which we know were later than the date of an alleged writer,
a/ways conclusive proofs that the work which contains them
cannot be his work, for such allusions constantly creep into
the margin of books at the hands of copyists, especially if those
books were — as Colgan says the Tripartite life was — annotated
and explained in schools. In cases of this kind there is always
considerable latitude to be allowed to destructive and con-
structive criticism, and at the end matters must still remain
doubtful. *
So much for the more important lives of St. Patrick, the
first known litterateur of Ireland.
1 Here is a short passage from the Tripartite, which will show the
language in which it is written : " Fecht ann occ tuidhecht do Patraic
do Chlochur antuaith da fuarcaib a thren-fher dar doraid and, i.e., Epscop
mac Cairthind. Issed adrubart iar turcbail Patraic : uch uch. Mu
Debroth, ol Patraic ni bu gnath in foculsin do rad duitsiu. Am senoir
ocus am lobur ol Epscop Mac Cairthind," which would run some way
thus in the modern language : " Feacht [uair] do bhi ann, ag tigheacht
do Phadraig go Clochar (i gcondae, Tir-Eoghain) on tuaidh, d' iomchair
a threan-fhear e thar sruth do bhi ann, eadhoin Easbog Mac Cairthind.
Is eadh adubhairt tar eis Padraig do thogbhail " Uch, uch ! " Mo Dhebh-
roth [focal do bhi ag Padraig, ionnann agus " dar mo laimh " no mar
sin], nior ghnath an focal sin do radh duit-se. Taim im sheanoir agus
im lobhar ar Easbog Mac Cairthind. See O'Curry MS. Materials, p. 598.
CHAPTER XIV
ST. BRIGIT
ST. BRIGIT was — after St. Patrick himself — probably the most
noted figure amongst Irish Christians in the fifth century.
She must have attained her extraordinary influence through
sheer ability and intellectuality, for she appears to have been
the daughter of a slave- woman,1 employed in the mansion of
a chief called Dubhthach [Duv-hach, or Duffach], who was
himself tenth in descent from Felimidh, the lawgiver monarch
of Ireland in the second century. The king's wife, jealous of
her husband's liking for his slave, threatened him with these
words, " Unless thou sellest yon bondmaid in distant lands I
will exact my dowry from thee and I will leave thee," and so
had her driven from the place and sold to a druid, in whose
house her daughter, Dubhthach's offspring, soon afterwards saw
the light. She was thus born into slavery, though not quite
a slave ; for Dubhthach, in selling the mother into slavery,
expressly reserved for himself her offspring, whatever it
might be. She must have been, at least, early inured to
hardship, as St. Patrick had been. The druid, however, did
1 Cogitosus, who probably wrote in the beginning of the eighth
century, makes no allusion to her slave-parentage, but this was to be
expected.
156
ST. BRIGIT 157
not prevent her from being baptized. She grew up to be a
girl of exceeding beauty, and many suitors sought her in
marriage. She returned to her father's house, but refused all
offers of matrimony. She aroused the jealousy of her father's
wife, as her mother had done before her, and Dubhthach,
indignant at her unbounded generosity with his goods, decided
upon selling her to the king of North Leinster. Her father's
abortive attempt to get rid of her on this occasion is thus
quaintly described in her Irish life in the Leabhar Breac.
"Thereafter," says the life, "Dubhthach and his consort were
minded to sell the holy Brigit into bondage, for Dubhthach liked
not his cattle and his wealth to be dealt out to the poor, and that is
what Brigit used to do. So Dubhthach fared in his chariot and
Brigit along with him.
" Said Dubhthach to Brigit, ' Not for honour or reverence to thee
art thou carried in a chariot, but to take thee, to sell thee to grind
the quern for Dunlang mac Enda, King of Leinster.'
"When they came to the King's fortress Dubhthach went in to
the king, and Brigit remained in her chariot at the fortress door.
Dubhthach had left his sword in the chariot near Brigit. A leper
came to Brigit to ask an alms. She gave him Dubhthach's sword.
"Said Dubhthach to the King, 'Wilt thou buy a bondmaid,
namely, my daughter ? ' says he.
" Said Dunlang, ' Why sellest thou thine own daughter ? '
" Said Dubhthach, ' She stayeth not from selling my wealth and
from giving it to the poor.3
" Said the King, ' Let the maiden come into the fortress.'
" Dubhthach went to Brigit, and was enraged against her because
she had given his sword to the poor man.
"When Brigit came into the King's presence the King said to
her, ' Since it is thy father's wealth that thou takest, much more
wilt thou take my wealth and my cattle and give them to the poor.'
" Said Brigit, ' The Son of the Virgin knoweth if I had thy might,
with all Leinster, and with all thy wealth, I would give them to the
Lord of the Elements.'
" Said the King to Dubhthach, ' Thou art not fit on either hand
to bargain about this maiden, for her merit is higher before God
than before men/ and the King gave Dubhthach an ivory-hilted sword
(Claideb det], et sic liberata est sancta Virgo Brigita a captivititate.1"
' See Stokes, « Three Middle Irish Homilies."
158 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
She at length succeeded in assuming the veil of a nun at
the hands of a bishop called Mucaille, along with seven virgin
companions. With these she eventually retired into her
father's territory and founded a church at Kildare, beside an
ancient oak-tree, which existed till the tenth century, and
which gives its name to the spot.1 Even at this early
period Kildare seems to have been a racecourse, and St. Brigit
is described in the ancient lives as driving across it in her
chariot.
It is remarkable that there is scarcely any mention of St.
, Brigit in the lives of St. Patrick, although, according to the
usual chronology they were partly contemporaries, St. Brigit
having become a nun about the year 467, and St. Patrick
having lived until 492. About the only mention of her in the
saint's life is that which tells how she once listened to Patrick
preaching for three nights and days, and fell asleep, and as she
dreamt she saw first white oxen in white corn-fields, and then
darker ones took their place, and lastly black oxen. And
thereafter, she beheld sheep and swine, and dogs and wolves
quarrelling with each other, and upon her waking up, St.
Patrick explained her dream as being symbolical of the history
of the Irish Church present and future. The life of Brigit
herself in the Book of Lismore tells the vision somewhat
differently :
" ' I beheld,' said she, to Patrick, when he asked her why she had
fallen asleep, ' four ploughs in the north-east which ploughed the
whole island, and before the sowing was finished the harvest was
ripened, and clear well-springs and shiny streams came out of the
furrows. White garments were on the sowers and ploughmen. I
beheld four other ploughs in the north which ploughed the island
athwart and turned the harvest again, and the oats which they had
sown grew up at once and were ripe, and black streams came out of
the furrows, and there were black garments on the sowers and on the
ploughmen.' "
1 Cill-dara, the " Church of the Oak-tree," now Kildare.
ST. BRIG IT 159
This vision Patrick explained to her, saying —
" ' The first four ploughs which thou beheldest, those are I and
thou, who sow the four books of the gospel with a sowing of faith and
belief and piety. The harvest which thou beheldest are they who
come unto that faith and belief through our teaching. The four
ploughs which thou beheldest in the north are the false teachers and
the liars which will overturn the teaching which we have sown.' "
St. Brigit's small oratory at Kildare, under the shadow of her
branching oak, soon grew into a great institution, and within
her own lifetime two considerable religious establishments
sprang up there, one for women and the other for men. She
herself selected a bishop to assist her in governing them, and
another to instruct herself and her nuns. Long before her
death, which occurred about the year 525, a regular city and a
great school rivalling the fame of Armagh itself, had risen
round her oak-tree. Cogitosus, himself one of the Kildare
monks, who wrote a Latin life of St. Brigit at the desire of the
community, gives us a fine description of the great church of
Kildare in his own day, which was evidently some time prior
to the Danish invasion at the close of the eighth century,1 but
how long before is doubtful. He tells us that the church
was both large and lofty, with many pictures and hangings, and
with ornamental doorways, and that a partition ran across the
breadth of the church near the chancel or sanctuary :
" At one of its extremities there was a door which admitted the
bishop and his clergy to the sanctuary and to the altar ; and at the
1 He himself says, " Et quis sermone explicate potest maximum decorem
hujus ecclesiae et innumera illius civitatis qui dicemus miracula . . . [hie]
nullus carnalis adversarius nee concursus timetur hostium, sed civitas est
refugii tutissima . . . et quis ennumerare potest diversas turbas et in-
numerabiles populos de omnibus provinciis affluentes, alii ad epularum
abundantiam, alii languidi propter sanitates, alii ad spectaculum turbarum,
alii cum magnis donis venientes ad solemnitatem Nativitatis S. Brigitae
quae in die Calendarum est," etc. These are the evident outcome of the
piping times of peace which Ireland enjoyed in the seventh and eighth
centuries. It would have been impossible to have written in this way after
the close of the eighth century. See chap. 36 of Cogitosus's life, " Trias
Thaumaturga," p. 524 of the Louvain edition.
160 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
other extremity on the opposite side there was a similar door by
which Brigit and her virgins and widows used to enter to enjoy the
banquet of the Body and Blood of Christ. Then a central partition
ran down the nave, dividing the men from the women, the men
being on the right and the women on the left, and each
division having its own lateral entrance. These partitions did
not rise to the roof of the church, but only so high as to serve
their purpose. The partition at the sanctuary or chancel was formed
with boards of wood decorated with pictures and covered with linen
hangings which might, it seems, be drawn aside at the consecration,
to give the people in the nave a better view of the holy mysteries."1
The two institutions — nuns and monks — planted by St.
Brigit continued long to flourish side by side, and Kildare is
the only religious establishment in Ireland, says Dr. Healy,
which down to a comparatively recent period preserved the
double line of succession, of abbot-bishops and of abbesses. The
annalists always took care to record the names of the abbesses
with the same accuracy as those of the abbots, and to the last
the abbesses as successors of St. Brigit, were credited with, in
public opinion, and probably enjoyed in fact, a certain
supremacy over the bishops of Kildare themselves.
Amongst other occupations the monks and scholars of Kildare
seem to have given themselves up to decorative art, and a
school of metal work under the supervision of Brigit's first
bishop soon sprang into existence, producing all kinds of
artistically decorated chalices, bells, patens, and shrines ; and
the impulse given thus early to artistic work and to beautiful
creations seems to have long propagated itself in Kildare, as
the description of the church by Cogitosus shows, and as we
may still conjecture from the exquisite round tower with its
unusually ornamented doorway and its great height of over 1 30
feet, the loftiest tower of the kind in Ireland.
1 Thus well summarised by Dr. Healy from the more diffuse Latin of
Cogitosus. His description of the church is as follows: It was "solo
spatiosa et in altum minaci proceritate porrecta ac decorata pictis tabulis,
tria intrinsecus habens oratoria ampla, et divisa parietibus tabulatis." One of
the walls was " decoratus, et imaginibus depictus, ac linteaminibus tectus."
ST. £ RIG IT 161
No doubt several attributes of the pagan Brigit,1 who, as we
have seen, was accounted by the ancient Irish to have been the
goddess of poets, passed over to her Christian namesake, who
was also credited with being the patroness of men of learning.
On this, her life in the Book of Lismore contains the following
significant and rather obscure passage :
" Brigit was once with her sheep on the Curragh, and she saw
running past her a son of reading,2 to wit Nindid the scholar was he.
" ' What makes thee unsedate, O son of reading ? ' saith Brigit, ' and
what seekest thou in that wise ? '
" ' O nun/ saith the scholar, ' I am going to heaven.'
"'The Virgin's son knoweth/ said Brigit, 'happy is he that goeth
that journey, and for God's sake make prayer with me that it may be
easy for me to go.'
" ' O nun/ said the scholar, ' I have no leisure, for the gates of
heaven are open now and I fear they may be shut against me. Or,
if thou art hindering me pray the Lord that it may be easy for me to
go to heaven, and I will pray the Lord for thee, that it may be easy
for thee, and that thou mayest bring many thousands with thee, into
heaven.'
1 This has not escaped Windisch. " Wahrend," he writes, " Patrick nur der
christlichen Hagiologie angehort, scheint Brigit zugleich die Erbin einer
alien heidnischen Gottheit zu sein. Ihr Wesen enthalt Ziige die mehr
als eine heilig gesprochen Nonne hinter ihr vermuthen lassen." Windisch
bases this chiefly upon the expressions in Broccan's hymn, which calls her
the mother of Christ, and calls Christ her son, and equates her with Mary.
The passage which I have adduced from the Irish life is even more
remarkable :
" Brigit," writes Whitley Stokes " (cp. Skr. bhargas) was born at sunrise
neither within nor without a house, was bathed in milk, her breath revives
the dead, a house in which she is staying flames up to heaven, cow-dung
blazes before her, oil is poured on her head ; she is fed from the milk of
white red-eared cow ; a fiery pillar rises over her head ; sun rays support
jr wet cloak ; she remains a virgin ; and she was one of the two mothers
Christ the Anointed. She has, according to Giraldus Cambrensis, a
perpetual ashless fire watched by twenty nuns, of whom herself was one,
blown by fans or bellows only, and surrounded by a hedge within which
no male could enter " ("Top. Hib." chaps. 34, 35and36),from all which Stokes
declares that one may without much rashness pick out certain of her life-
incidents, as having " originally belonged to the myth or the ritual of some
Idess of fire." (See preface to "Three Middle Irish Homilies.")
2 " Mac-leighinn," which is to this day a usual Irish term for student.
1 62 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
" Brigit recited a paternoster with him. And he was pious thence-
forward, and it is he that gave her communion and sacrifice when
she was dying. Wherefore thence it came to pass that the comradeship
of the world's sons of reading is with Brigit, and the Lord gives them
through Brigit every perfect good they ask" *
/ As St. Patrick is pre-eminently the patron saint of Ireland,
/ so is Brigit its patroness, and with the Irish people no Christian
• name is more common for their boys than Patrick, or for their
\girls than Brigit.2 She was universally known as the "Mary
of the Gael," and reverenced with a certain chivalric feeling
which seems to have been always present with the Gaelic nation
in the case of women, for, says her Irish life, her desire " was
to satisfy the poor, to expel every hardship, to spare every
miserable man. ... It is she that helpeth every one who is in
a strait or a danger ; it is she that abateth the pestilences ; it is
she that quelleth the anger and the storm of the sea. She is
the prophetess of Christ : she is the queen of the south : She
is the Mary of the Gael" The writer closes thus in a burst
of eloquence :
1 Thus translated by Dr. Whitley Stokes in his " Lives of the Saints
from the Book of Lismore," p. 194. In the original : " Conid assein dorala
cumthanus mac leighinn in domuin re Brigit, co tabair in coimdhi doibh
tria atach Brigte gach maith fhoirbhthi chuinghid."
2 Or to speak more accurately no names lyere more common, but owing
to the action of various influences, particularly of the National Board,
with unsympathetic persons at its head, and of the men who direct
the modern education of the Irish, the people who are not allowed by tl
National Board to learn history, and who are taught to despise the Irish
language, are gradually being made ashamed of any names that are not
English, and Patrick and Brigit almost bid fair to follow the way of
Cormac, Cortn, Felim, Art, Donough, Fergus, Diarmuid, and a score
other Christian names of men in common use a century ago, but run
almost wholly extinct, and of Meve, Sive, Eefi, Sheela, Nuala, and as many
more female names now nearly or completely obsolete. A woman of
some education said to me lately, " God forbid I should handicap my
daughter in life by calling her Brigit ; " and a Catholic bishop said th<
other day that too often when an Irish parent abroad did pluck up courage
to christen his son " Patrick," he put it in, in a shamefaced whisper,
the end of several other names. This is the direct result of the teacl
given by the National Board.
ST. BRIG IT 163
" Her relics are on earth, with honour and dignity and primacy,
with miracles and marvels. Her soul is like a sun in the heavenly
kingdom, among the choir of angels and archangels. And though
great be her honour here at present, greater by far will it be when
she shall arise like a shining lamp, in completeness of body and soul
at the great Assembly of Doomsday, in union with cherubim and
seraphim, in union with the Son of Mary the Virgin, in the union
that is nobler than every union, in the union of the Holy Trinity,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit."
As of St. Patrick, so of his great co-evangeliser St. Brigit,
there exist quite a number of various lives ; the most ancient
being probably a metrical life in Irish contained in the Book
of Hymns, of which there still exists an eleventh century MS.
It consists of fifty-three stanzas of four lines each, and is
ascribed to St. Broccan or Brogan Cloen, who seems to have
lived at the beginning of the seventh century.1 This life does
little more than expatiate upon Brigit's miracles and virtues.
The next life of importance is that already mentioned, by
Cogitosus, the Kildare monk, whose date is uncertain, but is
clearly prior to the Danish invasions. This life, which is in
very creditable Latin, and four others, were printed by Colgan.
The first of these four is — probably falsely — attributed to St.
Ultan, who died in the middle of the seventh century ; the
next is by a monk who is called Animosus, but of whom
1 He is said to have written this hymn at the instigation of Ultan, who
died in 653, but, as Windisch remarks, mention is probably made of Ultan
only because he is said to have been the first to collect the miracles of
Brigit — "die Sprache," adds Windisch, uist alterthiimlich ; besonders
beachtenswerth sind die ziemlich zahlreichen Perfectformen." It is remark-
able that the miracles attributed to Brigit are given in the same order in
this hymn and in Cogitosus' life of her. The metre is irregular.
" Xi bu Sanct Brigit suanach
Ni bu huarach im seirc De,
Sech ni chiuir ni cossena
Ind noeb dibad bethath che."
The life by Cogitosus is evidently pre-Danish, and it is more likely to be
an extension of the short metrical one, than that the metrical one should
be a resume of it. If this is so it bespeaks a considerable antiquity for the
Irish verses.
1 64 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
nothing is known, though, as St. Donatus, who became bishop
of Fiesole in 824, alludes to his works, he must have been an
early author ; the third is a twelfth-century work, by Laurence
of Durham, an Englishman ; and the last is in Latin verse,
taken from a MS. which the unwearied Colgan procured from
Monte Cassino, and which is attributed to Coelan, a monk of
Iniscaltra, who probably lived in the eighth century, while a
prologue to this life is prefixed by a later writer, the celebrated
Irish bishop of Fiesole, Donatus, who, in the early part of the
ninth century, worked with great success in Italy. There is
something touching in the language with which this great and
successful child of the Gael reverts in his prologue to the home
of his childhood : —
" Far in the west they tell of a matchless land,1 which goes in
ancient books by the name of Scotia [i.e., Ireland] ; rich in resources
this land, having silver, precious stones, vestures and gold, well suited
to earth-born creatures as regards its climate, its sun, and its arable
soil ; that Scotia of lovely fields that flow with milk and honey, hath
skill in husbandry, and raiments, and arms, and arts, and fruits. There
are no fierce bears there, nor ever has the land of Scotia brought
forth savage broods of lions. No poisons hurt, no serpent creeps
through the grass, nor does the babbling frog croak and complain by
the lake. In this land the Scottish race are worthy to dwell, a
renowned race of men in war, in peace, in fidelity."
Whitley Stokes has published the Irish lives of St. Brigit
from the Leabhar Breac and the Book of Lismore, and
Donatus alludes to other lives by St. Ultan 2 and St. Eleran,
1 There is a fragment in the Irish MS. Rawlinson, B. 512, quoted some-
where by Kuno Meyer, which reminds one of this passage. It begins :
" Now the island of Ireland, Inis Herenn, has been set in the west. As
Adam's Paradise stands at the sunrise, so Ireland stands at the sunset, and
they are alike in the nature of their soil," etc.
2 St. Ultan wrote a beautiful Irish hymn and also a Lafin hymn to her—
at least they are attributed to him — beginning —
" Christus in nostra insola *
Sue vocatur hibernia
stensus est hominibus
Maximis mirabilibus.
ST. BRIG IT
165
so that Brigit has not lacked biographers. She herself is said
to have written a rule for her nuns and some other things, and
O'Curry prints one Irish poem ascribed to her — in which she
prays for the family of heaven to be present at her feast :
"I should like the men of heaven in my own house, I
should like rivers of peace to be at their disposal," etc. —
which appears to be alluded to in the preface to the Litany
of Angus the Culdee, as the " great feast which St. Brigit
made for Jesus in her heart." I
Que perfecit per felicem
Celestis vite virginem
Precellentem pro merito
Magno in mundi circulo."
See Todd's " Liber Hymnorum," vol. ii. p. 58.
the Irish is seldom quite perfect.
1 This poem begins :
The Latin orthography of
" Ropadh maith lem corm-lind mor
Do righ na righ
Ropadh maith lem muinnter nimhe
Acca hoi tre bithe shir."
I.e., " I would like a great lake of ale for the King of the kings, I would
like the people of heaven to be drinking it through eternal ages," which
sounds curious, but Brigit probably meant it allegorically.
CHAPTER XV
COLUMCILLE
THE third great patron Saint of Ireland, the man who stands
out almost as conspicuously as St. Patrick himself in the
religious history of the Gael, the most renowned missionary,
scribe, scholar, poet, statesman, anchorite, and school-founder
of the sixth century is St. Columcille.1 Everything about this
remarkable man has conspired to fix upon him the imagination
of the Irish race. He was not, like St. Patrick, of alien, nor
like St. Brigit, of semi-servile birth, but was sprung from the
highest and bluest blood of the Irish, being son of Felemidh,
son of Fergus, son of Conall Gulban — renowned to this day in
saga and romance — son of Niall of the Nine Hostages, that
great monarch of Ireland who ravaged Britain "and exacted
tributes far and wide from his conquered enemies.
He was born on the yth of December, 52i,2 twenty-nine
years after the reputed death of St. Patrick, and four years
1 Also often called St. Columba, to be strictly distinguished from Colum-
banus, who laboured on the Continent. The name is written sometimes
Colomb Cille and Colum Kille or Columkille. It is pronounced in Irish
Cullum-kilia, and means literally the " Dove of the Church," but in English
the name is generally pronounced Columkill.
2 As calculated by Dr. Reeves, who coincides with the " Four Masters"
and Dr. Lanigan. The other Annals waver between 518 and 523.
166
COLUMCILLE 167
before that of St. Brigit, at Gartan x in Donegal, a wild but
beautiful district of which his father was the prince. The
reigning monarch of Ireland was his half-uncle, while his mother
Ethne was the direct descendant of the royal line of Cathaoir
[Cauheer] Mor, the regnant family of Leinster, and he himself
would have had some chance of the reversion of the monarchy
had he been minded to press his claims. Reared at Kilmacrenari,
near Gartan, the place where the O'Donnells were afterwards
inaugurated, he received his first teaching at the hands of
St. Finnen or Finnian in his famous school at Moville, for
already since Patrick's death Ireland had become dotted with
such small colleges. It was here at this early age that his
school-fellows christened him Colum-cille, or jColum of the
Qhurch, on account of the assiduity with which he sought
the holy building. At this period the Christian clergy and the
bardic order were the only two educational powers in Ireland,
and after leaving St. Finnian, Columcille travelled south into
Leinster to a bard called Gemman2 with whom he took lessons.
From him he went to St. Finnen or Finnian of Clonard.
While studying at Clonard it was the custom for each of the
students to grind corn in his turn at a quern, but Columcille's
Irish life in the Book of Lismore tells us naively, in true old
Irish spirit, " howbeit an angel from heaven used to grind on
behalf of Columcille ; that was the honour which the Lord
used to render him because of the eminent nobleness of his
race." St. Ciaran [Keeran] was at this time a fellow-student
with him, and Finnian, says the Irish life, saw one night a
vision, " to wit, two moons arose from Clonard, a golden moon
and a silver moon. The golden moon went into the north
1 See the lines in O'Donnell's life of the saint, ascribed to St. Mura :
" Rugadh i nGartan da dheoin / S do h-oileadh i gCill mhic Neoin
'S do baisteadh mac na maise / A dTulaigh De Dubhghlaise."
2 He is called "German the Master" in the Book of Lismore life. In
the life of Finnian of Clonard he is called Carminator nomine gemanus,
who brings to St. Finnian " quoddam carmen magnificum."
1 68 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
of the island, and Ireland and Scotland gleamed under it. The
silver moon went on until it stayed by the Shannon, and
Ireland at her centre gleamed." That, says the author,
signified " Columcille with the grace of his noble kin and
his wisdom, and Ciaran with the refulgence of his virtues
and his good deeds."
Leaving Clonard behind him, Columcille passed on to yet
another school — this time to that of Mobhi at Glasnevin, near
Dublin, where there were as many as fifty students at work,
living in huts or cells grouped round an oratory, some of whom
were famous men in after-time, for they included Cainnech and
Comgall and Ciaran. A curious incident is recorded of these
three and of Columcille in the Irish life in the Book of Lismore.
Columcille was driven from Glasnevin by the approach of
the great plague which ravaged the country, and of which
his teacher Mobhi died.
" Once on a time," says the author, " a great church was built by
Mobhi. The clerics were considering what each of them would
like to have in the church. ' I should like,' said Ciaran, ' its full of
church children to attend the canonical hours.' ' I should like,' said
Cainnech, ' to have its full of books to serve the sons of life.'
should like,' said Comgall, ' its full of affliction and disease to be in
my own body : to subdue me and repress me.' Then Columcille
chose its full of gold and silver to cover relics and shrines withal.
Mobhi said it should not be so, but that Columcille's community
would be wealthier than any community, whether in Ireland* or in
Scotland." x
1 A similar story of Cummain the Tall, of Guaire the Connacht king who
still gives his name to the town of Gort, which is Gort Inse-Guaire, and
of Caimine of Inisceltra, is told in the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, and printed
by Whitley Stokes in a note at p. 304 of his " Lives from the Book of
Lismore." Each of the three got as he had desired, for, says the
chronicler, "all their musings were made true. The earth was given
to Guaire. Wisdom was given to Cummain. Diseases and sicknesses
were inflicted on Caimine, so that no bone of him joined together in the
earth, but melted and decayed with the anguish of every disease and of
every tribulation, so that they all went to heaven according to their
musings." (See for the same story the Yellow Book of Lecan, p. 132,
of facsimile.)
COLUMCILLE 169
Betaking himself northward with a growing reputation, he
was offered by his cousin, then Prince of Aileach, near Derry,
and afterwards monarch of Ireland, the site of a monastery on
the so-called island of Derry, a rising ground of oval shape,
covering some two hundred acres, along the slopes of which
flourished a splendid forest of oak-trees, which gave to the
oasis its name of Derry or the oak grove. Columcille, like
all Gaels — and indeed all Celts — was full of love for every-
thing beautiful in nature, both animate and inanimate, and so
careful was he of his beloved oaks that, contrary to all custom,
he would not build his church with its chancel towards the
east, for in that case some of the, oaks would have had to be
felled to make room for it. He laid strict injunctions upon all
his successors to spare the lovely grove, and enjoined that if
any of the trees should be blown down some of them should go
for fuel to their own guest-house, and the rest be given to
the people.
This was Columcille's first religious institution,* and, like
every man's firstling, it remained dear to him to the last.
Years afterwards, when the thought of it came back to him
on the barren shores of lona, he expressed himself in passionate
Irish poetry.
For oh ! were the tributes of Alba mine
From shore unto centre, from centre to sea,
The site of one house, to be marked by a line
In the midst of fair Derry were dearer to me.
That spot is the dearest on Erin's ground,
For the treasures that peace and that purity lend,
For the hosts of bright angels that circle it round,
Protecting its borders from end to end.
The dearest of any on Erin's ground
For its peace and its beauty I gave it my love,
Each leaf of the oaks around Derry is found
To be crowded with angels from heaven above.
i;o LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
My Derry ! my Derry ! my little oak grove,
My dwelling, my home, and my own little cell,
May God the Eternal in Heaven above
Send death to thy foes and defend thee well." x
Columcille was yet a young man, only twenty-five years of
age, when he founded Derry, but both his own genius, and
more especially his great friends and kinsfolk, had conspired to
make him famous. For the next seventeen years he laboured
in Ireland, and during this time founded the still more
celebrated schools of Durrow in the present King's County,
and of Kells in Meath, both of which became most famous in
after years. Durrow,2 which, like Derry, was named from
1 Literally, " Were the tribute of all Alba mine, from its centre to its
border, I would prefer the site of one house in the middle of Derry. The
reason I love Derry is for its quietness, for its purity, and for the crowds
of white angels from the one end to the other. The reason why I love
Derry is for its quietness, for its purity, crowded full of heaven's angels in
every leaf of the oaks of Derry. My Derry, my little oak grove, my
dwelling and my little cell, O Eternal God in heaven above, woe be to
him who violates it."
" Is aire, caraim Doire
Ar a reidhe, ar a ghloine,
's ar iomatt a aingel find
On chind go soich aroile."
This poem is taken from a Brussels MS., copied by Michael O'Clery for
Father Colgan, and by him accepted apparently as genuine. Some of it
may very well be so, only, as usual, it has been greatly altered and
modified in transcription, as may be seen from the above verse. (See
p. 288 of Reeves' " Adamnan.") Some of the verses are evidently inter-
pelations, but the Irish life in the Book of Lismore distinctly attributes to
him the verse which I have here given, going out of its way to quote it in
full, but the third line is a little different as quoted in the life : " ar is
lomlan aingeal bhfinn."
2 In Irish Dair-magh, " oak-plain." Columcille seems to have been
particularly fond of the oak, for his Irish life tells us that it was under
a great oak-tree that he resided while at Kells also. The writer adds,
"and it" — the great oak-tree — "remained till these latter times, when it
fell through the crash of a mighty wind. And a certain man took some-
what of its bark to tan his shoes with. Now, when he did on the shoes,
he was smitten with leprosy from his sole to his crown." It is well known
to this day that it is unlucky, or worse, to touch a saint's tree. I have been
observing one that was, when in the last stage of decrepitude, blown down
COLUMCILLE 171
the beautiful groves of oak which were scattered along the slope
of Druim-cain, or " the pleasant hill," seems to have retained
to the last a hold upon the affections of Columcille second only
to that of Deny. When its abbot, Cormac the voyager,
visited him long years afterwards in lona, and expressed his
unwillingness to return to his monastery again, because, being
a Momonian of the race of Eber, the southern Ui Neill were
jealous of him, and made his abbacy unpleasant or impossible,
Columcille reproached him in pathetic terms for abandoning so
lovely an abode —
" With its books and its learning,
A devout city with a hundred crosses."
" O Cormac," he exclaimed —
" I pledge thee mine unerring word
Which it is not possible to impugn,
Death is better in reproachless Erin
Than perpetual life in Alba [Scotland].1 -*
a few years ago at the well of St. Aracht or Atracta, a female saint of
Connacht in the plains of Boyle ; yet, though the people around are
nearly famished for want of fuel, not one twig of it has yet been
touched. In the Edinburgh MS. of Columcille's life we read how on
another occasion he made a hymn to arrest a fire that was consuming the
oak-wood, " and it is sung against every fire and against every thunder
from that time to this." (See Skene's " Celtic Scotland," vol. ii. pp. 468-507.)
1 " 7s si mo cubhus gan col
's nocha conagar m' eiliughadh
Ferr ecc ind Eirind cen ail
Ina sir beatha ind Alpuin."
For the whole of this poem, in the form of a dialogue between Cormac
and Columcille, see p. 264 of Reeves' " Adamnan." It is very hard to say
how much or how little of these poems is really Columcille's. Colgan
was inclined to think them genuine. Of course, as we now have them,
the language is greatly modernised ; but I am inclined to agree with Dr.
Healy, who judges them rather from internal than from linguistic
evidence ; and while granting, of course, that they have been retouched
by later bards, adds, "but in our opinion they represent substantially
poems that were really written by the saint. They breathe his pious
spirit, his ardent love for nature, and his undying affection for his native
1/2 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
And on another occasion, when it strikes him how happy
the son of Dima, /.*., Cormac, must be at the approach ot
summer along the green hillside of Rosgrencha — another
name for Durrow — amid its fair slopes, waving woods, and
singing birds, compared with himself exiled to the barren
shores of rugged lona, he bursts forth into the tenderest
song—
" How happy the son is of Dima ! no sorrow
For him is designed,
He is having, this hour, round his own cell in Durrow
The wish of his mind :
The sound of the wind in the elms, like the strings of
A harp being played,
The note of the blackbird that claps with the wings of
Delight in the glade.
With him in Rosgrencha the cattle are lowing
At earliest dawn,
On the brink of the summer the pigeons are cooing
And doves on his lawn," etc.1
Columcille continued his labours in Ireland, founding
churches and monasteries and schools, until he was forty-two
land. Although retouched, perhaps, by a later hand, they savour so
strongly of the true Columbian spirit that we are disposed to reckon them
amongst the genuine compositions of the saint." (" Ireland's Schools and
Scholars," p. 329.) " The older pieces here preserved," says Dr. Robert
Atkinson in his preface to the contents of the facsimile of the Book of
Leinster, " and of whose genuineness and authenticity there seems no room
for doubt, ex. gr., the Poems ofColum Cille, bear with them the marks of the
action of successive transcribers, whose desire to render them intelligible
has obscured the linguistic proofs of their age."
1 Literally, "How happy the son of Dima of the devout church, when he
hears in Durrow the desire of his mind, the sound of the wind against the
elms when 'tis played, the blackbird's joyous note when he claps his
wings ; to listen at early dawn in Rosgrencha to the cattle, the cooing of
the cuckoo from the tree on the brink of summer," etc. (See Reeves'
" Adamnan," p. 274).
" Fuaim na goithi ris in leman ardos peti
Longaire luin duibh conati ar mben a eti."
i
COLUMC1LLE 173
years of age. He was at this time at the height of his physical
and mental powers, a man of a masterful but of a too passion-
ate character, of fine physique, and enjoying a reputation
second to that of none in Erin. The commentator in the
Feilire of Angus describes his appearance as that of "a man
well-formed, with powerful frame ; his skin was white, his
face was broad and fair and radiant, lit up with large, grey,1
luminous eyes ; his large and well-shaped head was crowned,
except where he wore his frontal tonsure, with close and
curling hair. His voice was clear and resonant, so that he
could be heard at the distance of 1,500 paces,2 yet sweet with
more than the sweetness of the bards." His activity was
incessant. " Not a single hour of the day," says Adamnan,
" did he leave unoccupied without engaging either in prayer,
or in reading, or in writing, or in some other work ; " and he
laboured with his hands as well as with his head, cooking or
looking after his ploughmen, or engaged in ecclesiastical or
secular matters. All accounts go to show that he was of a
hot and passionate temperament, and endowed with both the
virtues and the faults that spring from such a character.
Indeed this was, no doubt, why in the " famous vision " 3
1 He himself refers to his " grey eye looking back to Erin " in one of
his best-known poems.
2 In token of which is the Irish quatrain quoted in his life —
" Son a ghotha Coluim cille,
mor a binne os gach cleir
go ceann cuig cead deag ceimeann,
Aidhbhle reimeann, eadh ba reill.
3 " So then Baithine related to him the famous vision, to wit, three
chairs seen by him in heaven, even a chair of gold and a chair of silver
and a chair of glass. Columcille explained the vision. Ciaran the Great,
the carpenter's son, is the chair of gold for the greatness of his charity and
his mercy. Molaisse is the chair of silver because of his wisdom and his
piety. I myself am the chair of glass because of my affection, for I prefer
the Gaels to the men of the world, and Kinel Conall [his own tribe] to the
[other] Gaels, and the kindred of Lughid to the Kinel Conall." (Leabhar
Breac, quoted by Stokes, " Irish Lives," p. 303 ; but the reason here given
for being seated on a chair of glass is, as Stokes remarks, unmeaning.)
174 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
which Baithin saw concerning him, he was seated only on
a chair of glass ; while Ciaran was on a chair of gold, and
Molaisse upon a chair of silver. The commentator on the
Feilire of Angus boldly states that, " though his devotion was
delightful, he was carnal and often frail even as glass is fragile."
Aware of this, he wore himself out with fastings and vigils,1
and no doubt —
" Lenior et melior fit accedente senectu,"
for Adamnan describes him, from the recollections of the
monks who knew him, as being angelic in aspect 2 and bright
in conversation, and despite his great labours yet " dear to all,
displaying his holy countenance always cheerful." A curious
story is told in the Leabhar Breac, of the stratagems to which
his people resorted to checkmate his self-imposed penance ; for
having one day seen an old woman living upon pottage of
nettles, while she was waiting for her one cow to calve and
give her milk, the notion came to him that he too would
thenceforward live upon the same, for if she could do so, much
more could he, and it would be profitable to his soul in gaining
the kingdom of heaven. So, said the writer, he called his ser-
vant—
" ' Pottage/ saith he, ' from thee every night, and bring not the
milk with it.'
" ' It shall be done,' said the cook.
" He (the cook) bores the mixing-stick of the pottage, so that it
became a pipe, and he used to pour the meat juice into the pipe,
down, so that it was mixed through the pottage. That preserves
the cleric's (Columcille's) appearance. The monks perceived the
1 " Jejunationum quoque et vigiliarum indefessis laboribus sine ulla
intermissione, die noctu-que ita occupatus ut supra humanam possibili-
tatem uniuscujusque pondus specialis videretur opens," says Adamnan in
the preface to his first book.
2 " Erat enim aspectu angelicus, sermone nitidus, opere sanctus, ingenio
optimus, consilio magnus. . . et inter haec omnibus carus, hilarem semper
faciem ostendens sanctam, spiritus sancti gaudio intimis laitificabatur
praecordiis."
COLUMCILLE 175
cleric's good appearance, and they talked among themselves. That
is revealed to Columcille, so he said, ' May your successors be
always murmuring.'
" ' Well now,' said Columcille, said he, to his servant, * what dost
thou give me every day ? '
" ' Thou art witness,' said the cook, ' unless it come out of the iron
of the pot, or out of the stick wherewith the pottage is mixed, I know
nought else in it save pottage ! ' "
It was now, however, that events occurred which had the
result of driving Columcille abroad and launching him upon
a more stormy and more dangerous career, as the apostle of
Scotland and the Picts. St. Finnian of Moville, with whom he
studied in former days, had brought back with him from Rome
a copy of the Psalms, probably the first copy of St. Jerome's
translation, or Vulgate, that had appeared in Ireland, which he
highly valued, and which he did not wish Columcille to copy.
Columcille however, who was a dexterous and rapid scribe,
found opportunity, by sitting up during several nights, to make
a copy of the book secretly,1 but Finnian learning it claimed
1 This copy made by Columcille is popularly believed to be the cele-
brated codex known as the Cathach or " Battler," which was an heirloom
of the saint's descendants, the O'Donnells. It was always carried three
times round their army when they went to battle, on the breast of a cleric,
who, if he were free from mortal sin, was sure to bring them victory. The
Mac Robartaighs were the ancestral custodians of the holy relic, and
Cathbar O'Donnell, the chief of the race at the close of the eleventh cen-
tury, constructed an elaborately splendid shrine or cover for it. This
precious heirloom remained with the O'Donnells until Donal O'Donnell,
exiled in the cause of James II., brought it with him to the Continent and
fixed a new rim upon the casket with his name and date. It was reco-
vered from the Continent in 1802 by Sir Neal O'Donnell, and was opened
by Sir William Betham soon after. This would in the previous century
have been considered a deadly crime, for " it was not lawful " to open the
Cathach ; as it was, Sir Neal's widow brought an action in the Court of
Chancery against Sir William Betham for daring to open it. There turned
out to be a decayed wooden box inside the casket, and inside this again
was a mass of vellum stuck together and hardened into a single lump. By
long steeping in water however, and other treatment, the various leaves
came asunder, and it was found that what it contained was really a Psalter,
written in Latin, in a "neat but hurried hand." Fifty-eight leaves re-
mained, containing from the 3ist to the io6th Psalm, and an examination of
i;6 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
the copy. Columcille refused it, and the matter was referred
to King Diarmuid at Tara. The monarch, to whom books
and their surroundings were probably something new, as a
matter for legal dispute, could find in the Brehon law no
nearer analogy to adjudicate the case by, than the since cele-
brated sentence le gach boln a boimn, "with every cow her calf,"
in which terms he, not altogether unnaturally, decided in
favour of St. Finnian, saying, "with every book its son-book,
as with every cow her calf." r This alone might not have
brought about the crisis, but unfortunately the son of the king
of Connacht, who had been present at the great Convention or
Feis of Tara, in utter violation of the law of sanctuary which
alone rendered this great meeting possible, slew the son of the
king's steward, and knowing that the penalty was certain
death, he fled to the lodging of the northern princes Fergus
and Domhnall [Donall] who immediately placed him under the
protection of St. Columcille. This however did not avail him,
for King Diarmuid, who was no respecter of persons, had him
promptly seized and put to death in atonement for his crime.
This, combined with his unfortunate judgment about the
book, enraged the imperious Columcille to the last degree.
He made his way northward and appealed to his kinsmen to
avenge him. A great army was collected, led by Fergus and
Domhnall, two first cousins of Columcille, and by the king
of Connacht, whose son had been put to death. The High-
king marched to meet this formidable combination with all
the troops he could gather. Pushing his way across the island
he met their combined forces in the present county of Sligo,
the text has shown that it really does contain a copy of the second revision ,
of the Psalter by St. Jerome, which helps to strengthen the belief that this
may have been the very book for which three thousand warriors fought
and fell in the Battle of Cooldrevna.
1 Keating says that this account of the affair was preserved in the Black
Book of Molaga, one of his ancient authorities now lost. The king decided,
says Keating, " gorab Ids gach leabhar a mhaic-lcabhar, mar is le gach
boinn a boinin"
COLUMCILLE 177
between Benbulbin and the sea. A furious battle was de-
livered in which he was defeated with the loss of three thou-
sand men.
It was soon after this battle that Columcille decided to leave
Ireland. There is a great deal of evidence that he did so as a
kind of penance, either self-imposed or enjoined upon him by
St. Molafse [Moleesha], as Keating says, or by the " synod of
the Irish saints," as O'Donnell has it. He had helped to fill
all Ireland with arms and bloodshed, and three thousand men
had fallen in one battle largely on account of him, and it was
not the only appeal to arms which lay upon his conscience.1
He set sail from his beloved Derry in the year 593, determined,
according to popular tradition, to convert as many souls to
Christ as had fallen in the battle of Cooldrevna. Amongst
the dozen monks of his own order who accompanied him were
his two first cousins and his uncle.
It was death and breaking of heart for him to leave the land
of Erin, and he pathetically expresses his sorrow in his own
Irish verses.
" Too swiftly my coracle flies on her way,
From Derry I mournfully turned her prow,
I grieve at the errand which drives me to-day
To the Land of the Ravens, to Alba, now.
How swiftly we travel ! there is a grey eye
Looks back upon Erin, but it no more
Shall see while the stars shall endure in the sky
Her women, her men, or her stainless shore.
" These were," says the commentator on St. Columcille's hymn, the
; Altus," " the three battles which he had caused in Erin, viz., the battle of
1-Rathain, between him and Comgall, contending for a church, viz.,
. Torathair ; and the battle of Bealach-fheda of the weir of Clonard ; and
battle of Cul Dremhne [Cooldrevna] in Connacht, and it was against
rmait Mac Cerball [the High-king], he fought them both." Keating's
int also agrees with this, but Reeves has shown that the two later
les in which he was implicated probably took place after his exile,
M
i;8 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
From the plank of the oak where in sorrow I lie,
I am straining my sight through the water and wind,
And large is the tear of the soft grey eye
Looking back on the land that it leaves behind.
To Erin alone is my memory given,
To Meath and to Munster my wild thoughts flow,
To the shores of Moy-linny, the slopes of Loch Leven,
And the beautiful land the Ultonians know."
He refers distinctly to the penance imposed upon him by St.
Moleesha.
" To the nobles that gem the bright isle of the Gael
Carry this benediction over the sea,
And bid them not credit Moleesha's tale,
And bid them not credit his words of me.
Were it not for the word of Moleesha's mouth
At the cross of Ahamlish that sorrowful day,
I now should be warding from north and from south
Disease and distemper from Erin away."
His mind reverts to former scenes of delight —
" How dear to my heart in yon western land
Is the thought of Loch Foyle where the cool waves pour,
And the bay of Drumcliff on Culcinne's strand,
How grand was the slope of its curving shore !
O bear me my blessing afar to the West,
For the heart in my bosom is broken ; I fail.
Should death of a sudden now pierce my breast
I should die of the love that I bear the Gael ! " r
1 Literally : " How rapid the speed of my coracle and its stern turned
towards Derry. I grieve at the errand over the proud sea, travelling to Alba
of the Ravens. There is a grey eye that looks back upon Erin : it shall not
see during life the men of Erin nor their wives. My vision o'er the brine I
stretch from the ample oaken planks ; large is the tear from my soft grey
eye when I look back upon Erin. Upon Erin is my attention fixed, upon
Loch Leven [Lough Lene in West Meath], upon Line [Moy-linny, near
COLUMCILLE 179
Columcille is the first example in the saddened page of Irish
history of the exiled Gael grieving for his native land and
refusing to be comforted, and as such he has become the very
type and embodiment of Irish fate and Irish character. The
flag in bleak Gartan, upon which he was born, is worn thin
and bare by the hands and feet of pious pilgrims, and " the
poor emigrants who are about to quit Donegal for ever, come
and sleep on that flag the night before their departure from
Derry. Columcille himself was an exile, and they fondly hope
that sleeping on the spot where he was born will help them to
bear with lighter heart the heavy burden of the exile's
sorrows." x He is the prototype of the millions of Irish exiles
in after ages —
" Ruined exiles, restless, roaming,
Longing for their fatherland," 3
and the extraordinary deep roots which his life and poetry have
struck into the soil of the North was strikingly evidenced this
Antrim] , upon the land the Ultonians own, upon smooth Munster, upon
Meath. . . . Carry my benediction over the sea to the nobles of the Island
of the Gael, let them not credit Moleesha's words nor his threatened
persecution. Were it not for Moleesha's words at the Cross of Ahamlish,
I should not permit during my life disease or distemper in Ireland. . . .
Beloved to my heart also in the west is Drumcliff at Culcinne's strand : to
behold the fair Loch Foyle, the form of its shores is delightful. . . .
Take my blessing with thee to the west, broken is my heart in my
breast, should sudden death overtake me it is for my great love of the
Gael."
Dr. Healy's " Ireland's Schools and Scholars," p. 293. A fact which
is also confirmed by Dr. Reeves, p. Ixviii of his "Adamnan," where he
says: "The country people believe that whoever sleeps a night on this
stone will be free from home-sickness when he goes abroad, and for this
reason it has been much resorted to by emigrants on the eve of their
departure." I cannot say whether the breaking up of old ties produced
by the National Board — which has elsewhere so skilfully robbed the people/
of their birthright — may not have put an end to this custom within the last
few years.
3 " Deoraidhe gan sgith gan sos,
Mianaid a dtir 's a nduthchas."
This verse was either composed or quoted by John O'Mahony, the
Fenian Head-centre, when in America.
i So LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
very year (1898) by the wonderful celebration of his centenary at
Gartan, at which many thousands of people, who had travelled
all night over the surrounding mountains, were present, and
where it was felt to be so incongruous that the life of such a
great Irish patriot, prince, and poet, in the diocese, too, of an
O'Donnell, should be celebrated in English, that — probably for
the first time in this century — Irish poems were read and Irish
speeches made, even by the Cardinal-Primate and the
Bishop of the diocese.
Of Columcille's life on the craggy little island of lona, of
his splendid labours in converting the Picts, and of the
monastery which he established, and which, occupied by Irish
monks, virtually rendered lona an Irish island for the next
six hundred years, there is no need to speak here, for these
things belong rather to ecclesiastical than to literary history.
Columcille himself was an unwearied scribe, and delighted
in poetry. Ample provision was made for the multiplication
of books in all the monasteries which he founded, and his
Irish life tells us that he himself wrote "three hundred
gifted, lasting, illuminated, noble books." The life in the
Book of Lismore tells us that he once went to Clonmacnois
with a hymn he had made for St. Ciaran, 'for he made
abundant praises for God's household, as said the poet,
" Noble, thrice fifty, nobler than every apostle,
The number of miracles [of poems] are as grass,
Some in Latin, which was beguiling,
Others in Gaelic, fair the tale." '
Of these only three in Latin are now known to exist, whilst
of the great number of Irish poems attributed to him only a
few — half a dozen at the most — are likely to be even partly
genuine. His best known hymn is the " Altus," so called
from its opening word ; it was first printed by Colgan,1 and
1 Also in the " Liber Hymnorum," vol. ii. ; and again in 1882 with a prose
paraphrase and notes by the Marquis of Bute, who says : " the intrinsic
COLUMCILLE 181
its genuineness is generally admitted. It is a long and rudely-
constructed poem, of twenty-two stanzas, preserved in the
Book of Hymns, a MS. probably of the eleventh century.
Each stanza consists of six lines,1 and each line of sixteen
syllables. There is a pause after the eighth syllable, and a
kind of rhyme between every two lines. The first verses run
thus with an utter disregard of quantity.
"Altus prosator, vetustus dierum et ingenitus,
Erat absque origine primordii et crepidine,
Est et erit in saecula saeculorum infinitus,
Cui est unigenitus Christus et Spiritus Sanctus/' etc.
The second Latin hymn is a supplement to this one, com-
posed in praise of the Trinity, because Pope Gregory who, as
the legend states, perceived the angels listening when the "Altus"
was recited to him, was yet of opinion that the first stanza of
the original poem, despite its additional line, was insufficient to
express a competent laudation of the mystery, consequently
Columcille added, it was said, fifteen rude-rhyming couplets of
the same character as the "Altus," but it is very doubtful whether
they are genuine. The third hymn, the " Noli Pater," is still
shorter, consisting of only seven rhyming couplets with sixteen
syllables in each line. It was in ancient times considered an
efficient safeguard against fire and lightning. Some of his reputed
Irish poems we have already glanced at ; three that Colgan con-
sidered genuine were printed by Dr. Reeves in his " Adamnan ;"
and another, the touching " Farewell to Ara," is contained in the
"Gaelic Miscellany" of 1808; and another on his escape from
merits of the composition are undoubtedly very great, especially in the
latter capitula [i.e., stanzas], some of which the editor thinks would not
suffer by comparison with the Dies Irce." Dr. Dowden, Bishop of Edin-
burgh, has printed, in his pleasant little volume on the " Celtic Church in
Scotland," p. 323, a most admirable translation of it into English verse
by the Rev. Anthony Mitchell.
1 Except the first stanza, which being in honour of the Holy Trinity has
jven lines.
182 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
King Diarmuid, when the king of Connacht's son was put
to death for violating the Feis at Tara, is printed in the
"Miscellany" of the Irish Archaeological Society.1 There are
three verses, composed by him as a prayer at the battle of
Cooldrevna, ascribed to him in the "Chronicon Scotorum ;" and
there is a collection of fifteen poems attributed to him in the
O'Clery MSS. at Brussels, and nearly a hundred more — mostly
evident forgeries — in the Bodleian at Oxford.2 He does not
seem to have ever written any work in prose.
There are six lives of Columcille still extant, the greatest of
them all being that in Latin by Adamnan,3 who was one of
his successors in the abbacy of lona, and who was born only
twenty-seven years after Columcille's death. This admirable
work, written in flowing and very fair Latin, was derived, as
Adamnan himself tells us, partly from oral and partly from
written sources. A memoir of Columcille had already been
written by Cuimine Finn or Cummeneus Albus,4 as Adamnan
calls him, the last Abbot of lona but one before himself, and
that memoir he almost entirely embodied in his third book.
He had also some other written accounts before him, and the
Irish poems, both of the saint himself and of other bards,
amongst them Baithine M6r, who had enjoyed his personal
friendship, and St. Mura, who was a little his junior — poems
1 This poem begins —
" M'cenuran dam is in sliab,
A rig grian rop sorad sed,
Nocha n-eaglaigi dam ni,
Na du mbeind tri licit ced."
I find other verses attributed to him in the MS marked H i. n. in
Trinity College, Dublin.
2 Laud, 615.
3 Edited in 1857 for the Irish Archaeological Society by Dr. Reeves,
afterwards Bishop of Down, with all the perfection which the most
accurate scholarship and painstaking research could accomplish. It is not
too much to say that his name is likely to remain in the future associated
with those of Adamnan and Columcille.
4 Book iii., chapter 5 of Adamnan's " Life of Columcille."
COLUMCILLE 183
now lost. He had also constant opportunities of conversing
with those who had seen the great saint and had been familiar
with him in life, and he was writing on the spot and amidst
the associations and surroundings wherein his last thirty years
had been spent, and which were inseparably connected with
his memory. The result was that he produced a work, which
although not ostensibly a history, and dealing only with the
life of a single man, and that rather from the transcendental
than from the practical side, is nevertheless of the utmost value
to the historian on account not only of the general picture of
manners and customs, but still more on account of its incidental
references to contemporary history. " It is," says Pinkerton,
who, as Dr. Reeves remarks, was a writer not over-given to
eulogy, " the most complete piece of such biography that all
Europe can boast of, not only at so early a period but even
through the whole Middle Ages." Adamnan's other great
work on Sacred Places is mentioned by his contemporary, the
Venerable Bede, but he is silent as to Columcille's life. There
is, however, abundant internal evidence of its authenticity.
This evidence, however it might satisfy the minds of mere
Irish students like Colgan and Stephen White, proved in-
sufficient, however, to meet the exacting claims of certain
British scholars. " I cannot agree," said Sir James Dalrymple,
in the last century, " that the authority of Adamnanus is equal,
far less preferable to that of Bede, since it was agreed on all
hands to be a fabulous history lately published in his name, and
that he was remarkable for nothing, but that he was the first
abbot of that monastery who quit the Scottish institution, and
became fond of the English Romish Rites." r Dr. Giles, too,
who thought of editing it, tells us in his translation of
Bede's " Ecclesiastical History," that he had "strong doubts of
1 Alluding to the fact that Adamnan tried to persuade his countrymen
to change their mode of calculating Easter, and to adopt the Roman
tonsure. Sir James Dalrymple is here engaged in defending the Presby-
terian view of church government.
1 84 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
Adamnan's having written it." x And, finally, Schoell, a German,
professed to have convinced himself that Adamnan's preface
could not have been written by the same hand which wrote
the life, so different did the style of the two appear to him,
and wholly rejected it as a work of the seventh century written
at lona.
But it so happened that shortly before the year 1851, when
Schoell was impugning the genuineness of this work, the
ancient manuscript from which it had been copied by the
Irish Jesuit, Stephen White — and, from his copy, printed by
Colgan — actually came to light again, discovered by Dr.
Ferdinand Keller at the bottom of an old book-shelf in the
public library of Schaffhausen, into which it had been turned
with some other old manuscripts and books. A close exami-
nation of this remarkable text written in a heavy round Irish
hand, in nearly the same type of script as the Books of Kells
and Durrow, and of a more archaic character than that of the
Book of Armagh (written in 807), rendered it certain that
here was a codex of great value and antiquity. Nor was the
usual colophon containing the scribe's name and asking a prayer
for him missing. That name was Dorbene, a most rare one, of
which only two instances are known, both connected with
lona, the first of which records the death of Faelcu, son of
Dorbene, in 729, but as we know that Faelcu died in his
eighty-second year his father could hardly have been the scribe.
The other Dorbene was elected abbot of lona in 713 and died
the same year, so that it may be regarded as almost certain that
this book was written by him and that this copy is in his
handwriting. We have in this codex, then, the actual hand-
writing 2 of a contemporary of Adamnan himself, the handi-
1 "It is to be hoped," Dr. Reeves caustically remarked, "that the doubts
originated in a different style of research from that which made Bede's
Columcilli an island, and Dearmach [Durrow] the same as Derry ! "
" It may be objected," says Dr. Reeves, "that it was written by another
person of this name, or copied by a later hand from the autograph of this
Dorbene. The former exception is not probable, the name being almost
COLUMCILLE 185
work of the generation which succeeded Columcille, a volume
a hundred years older than even the Book of Armagh, a
volume which had been carried over to some of the numerous
Irish institutions on the Continent after the break-up of lona
by the Northmen. There are several corrections of the
orthography in a different and later hand, the date of which
is fixed by Dr. Keller at 800-820, and these are evidently the
work of a German monk, who was displeased with the peculiar
orthography of the Irish school, and who made these emenda-
tions after the MS. had been brought from lona to the
Continent. The following passage describing the last hours
of Columcille will both serve as a specimen of Adamnan's style
and also afford a minutely particular account of the end of this
great man. Its accuracy can hardly be impugned as it is
written by one who had every minute particular from eye-
witnesses, and as the actual manuscript from which it is
printed was copied from the author's own, either during his
life or within less than ten years after his death.1
Adamnan first tells us of several premonitions which the
saint had of his approaching end, how he, "now an old man,
wearied with age," was borne in his waggon to view his monks
labouring in the fields on the western slope of the island, and
intimated to them that his end was not far off, but that lest
unique, and found so pointedly connected with the Columbian society ;
the latter is less probable, as the colophon in Irish MSS. is always peculiar
to the actual scribe and likely to be omitted in transcription, as is the case
of later MSS. of the same recension preserved in the British Museum."
" Hoc ipsum MS. credi posset authographum Dorbbenei," says Van der
Meer, a learned monk, " subscriptio enirii ilia in rubro vix ab alio
descriptore addita fuisset ; characteres quoque antiquitatem sapiunt sasculi
octavi."
1 He died in 704, and Dorbene the scribe in 713. It is necessary to be
thus particular, even at the risk of being tedious, to correct the unlearned
assertions of people who can write that in treating of the "lives of St.
Patrick and St. Columba, one's faith is tried to the uttermost, leading not
a few to deny the very existence of the two missionaries " (" Irish Druids
and Religions," Berwick, p. 304) ; or the biassed dicta of men like Ledwich
who says that all Irish MSS. " savour of modern forgery."
1 86 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
their Easter should be one of grief, he would not be taken
from them until it was over. Later on in the year he went
out with his servant Diarmuid to inspect the granary, and was
pleased at the two large heaps of grain which were lying there,
and remarked that though he should be taken from his dear
monks, yet he was glad to see that they had a supply for the
year.
" And," says Adamnan, " when Diarmuid his servant heard this he
began to be sad, and said, ' Father, at this time of year you sadden
us too often, because you speak frequently about your decease.'
When the saint thus answered, ' I have a secret word to tell you,
which, if you promise me faithfully not to make it known to any
before my death, I shall be able to let you know more clearly about
my departure.' And when his servant, on bended knees, had
finished making this promise, the venerable man thus continued,
' This day is called in the sacred volumes the Sabbath, which is
interpreted Rest. And this day is indeed to me a sabbath, because
it is my last of this present laborious life, in which, after the trouble
of my toil, I take my rest ; for in the middle of this coming sacred
Sunday night, I shall to use the Scripture phrase, tread the way of
my fathers ; for now my Lord Jesus Christ deigns to invite me, to
whom, I say, at the middle of this night, on His own invitation, I
shall pass over ; for it was thus revealed to me by the Lord Himself.'
His servant, hearing these sad words, begins to weep bitterly : whom
the saint endeavoured to console as much as he was able.
" After this the saint goes forth from the barn, and returning to
the monastery sits down on the way, at the place where afterwards
a cross let into a millstone, and to-day standing there, may be per-
ceived on the brink of the road. And while the saint, wearied with
old age, as I said before, sitting in that place was taking a rest, lo !
the white horse, the obedient servant who used to carry the milk-
vessels between the monastery and the byre, meets him. It,
wonderful to relate, approached the saint and placing its head in
his bosom, by the inspiration of God, as I believe, for whom every
animal is wise with the measure of sense which his Creator has.-
bidden, knowing that his master was about to immediately depart
from him, and that he would see him no more, begins to lament and
abundantly to pour forth tears, like a human being, into the saint's
lap, and with beslavered mouth to make moan. Which when the
servant saw, he proceeds to drive away the tearful mourner, but the
saint stopped him, saying, ' Allow him, allow him who loves me, to
COLUMCILLE 187
pour his flood of bitterest tears into this my bosom. See, you,
though you are a man and have a rational mind, could have in no
way known about my departure if I had not myself lately disclosed
it to you, but to this brute and irrational animal the Creator Himself,
in His own way, has clearly revealed that his master is about to
depart from him.' And saying this he blessed the sorrowful horse
[the monastery's] servant, as it turned away from him.
" And going forth from thence and ascending a small hill, which
rose over the monastery, he stood for a little upon its summit, and
as he stood, elevating both his palms, he blessed his community and
said, ' Upon this place however narrow and mean, not only shall the
kings of the Scots [i.e., Irish] with their peoples, but also the rulers
of foreign and barbarous nations with the people subject to them,
confer great and no ordinary honour. By the saints of other
churches also, shall no common respect be accorded it.'
" After these words, going down from the little hill and returning
to the monastery, he sat in his cell writing a copy of the Psalms, and
on reaching that verse of the thirty-third Psalm where it is written,
' But they that seek the Lord shall lack no thing that is good ; '
' Here/ said he, 'we may close at the end of the page ; let Baithin
write what follows.' Well appropriate for the parting saint was
the last verse which he had written, for to him shall good things
eternal be never lacking, while to the father who succeeded him
[Baithin], the teacher of his spiritual sons, the following [words]
were particularly apposite, ' Come, my sons, hearken unto me. I
shall teach you the fear of the Lord,' since as the departing one
desired, he was his successor not only in teaching but also in
writing.1
" After writing the above verse and finishing the page, the saint
enters the church for the vesper office preceding the Sunday ; which
finished, he returned to his little room, and rested for the night on
his couch, where for mattress he had a bare flag, and for pillow
a stone, which at this day stands as a kind of commemorative
1 " Post haec verba de illo descendens monticellulo, et ad monasterium
revertens, sedebat in tugurio Psalterium scribens ; et ad ilium tricesimi
tertii psalmi versiculum perveniens ubi scribitur, Inquirentes autem
Dominum non deficient omni bono, Hie, ait, in fine cessandum est
paginae ; quae vero sequuntur Baitheneus scribat. Sancto convenienter
congruit decessori novissimus versiculus quern scripserat, cui numquam
bona deficient aeterna : succesori vero sequens patri, spiritalium doctor!
filiorum, Venite filii, audite me, timorem Domini docebo vos, congruenter
convenit ; qui, sicut decessor commendavit, non solo ei docendo sed etiam
scribendo successit."
1 88 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
monument beside his tomb.1 And there, sitting, he gives his last
mandates to the brethren, in the hearing of his servant only, saying,
' These last words of mine I commend to you, O little children, that
ye preserve a mutual charity with peace, and a charity not feigned
amongst yourselves ; and if ye observe to do this according to the
example of the holy fathers, God, the comforter of the good, shall
help you, and I, remaining with Him, shall make intercession for
you, and not only the necessaries of this present life shall be
sufficiently supplied you by Him, but also the reward of eternal
good, prepared for the observers of things Divine, shall be rendered
you.' Up to this point the last words of our venerable patron [when
now] passing as it were from this wearisome pilgrimage to his
heavenly country, have been briefly narrated.
"After which, his joyful last hour gradually approaching, the
saint was silent. Then soon after, when the struck bell resounded
in the middle of the night,2 quickly rising he goes to the church, and
hastening more quickly than the others he entered alone, and with
bent knees inclines beside the altar in prayer. His servant,
Diarmuid, following more slowly, at the same moment beholds, from
a distance, the whole church inside filled with angelic light round
the saint ; but as he approached the door this same light, which he had
seen, swiftly vanished ; which light a few others of the brethren, also
standing at a distance, had seen. Diarmuid then entering the church,
calls aloud with a voice choked with tears, ' Where art thou, Father ? '
And the lamps of the brethren not yet being brought, groping in
the dark, he found the saint recumbent before the altar : raising
him up a little, and sitting beside him, he placed the sacred head in
his own bosom. And while this was happening a crowd of monks
running up with lights, and seeing their father dying, begin to
lament. And as we have learned from some who were there
present, the saint, his soul not yet departing, with eyes upraised,
looked round on each side, with a countenance of wondrous joy and
gladness, as though beholding the holy angels coming to meet him.
Diarmuid then raises up the saint's right hand to bless the band of
monks. But the venerable father himself, too, in so far as he was
1 It is still shown at the east end of the Cathedral in lona, surrounded
by an iron cage to keep off tourists.
2 " The saint had previously attended at the vespertinalis Dominicce
noctis missa, an office equivalent to the nocturnal vigil, and now at the
turn of midnight the bell rings for matins, which were celebrated accord-
ing to ancient custom a little before daybreak." — Reeves. The early bells
were struck like gongs, not rung, hence the modern Irish for " ring the
beal " is bain an clog, " strike the bell."
COLUMCILLE 189
able, was moving his hand at the same lime, so that he might appear
to bless the brethren with the motion of his hand, what he could not
do with his voice, during his soul's departure. And after thus
signifying his sacred benediction, he straightway breathed forth
his life. When it had gone forth from the tabernacle of his body,
the countenance remained so long glowing and gladdened in a
wonderful manner by the angelic vision, that it appeared not that
of a dead man but of a living one sleeping. In the meantime the
whole church resounded with sorrowful lamentations." T
Besides the lives of Columcille, written by Adamnan and
Cummene, at least four more exist ; an anonymous life in
Latin, printed by Colgan and erroneously supposed by him
to be that of Cummene ; a life by John of Tinmouth, chiefly
compiled from Adamnan, which is also printed by Colgan ;
the old Irish life contained in four Irish MSS., namely, in the
Leabhar Breac, in the Book of Lismore, in a vellum MS. in
Edinburgh, and in an Irish parchment volume found by the
Revolutionary Commissioners, during the Republic, in a
private house in Paris, and by them presented to the Royal
Library of that city—
" Quae regio in terris nostri non plena laboris ! "
This life has been printed from the Book of Lismore by
Dr. Whitley Stokes. The last and most copious life is a
compilation of all existing documents and poems both in
Latin and Old Irish, and was made by order of O'Donnell
in 1532.
" Be it known," says the preface, " to the readers of this Life that
it was Manus, son of Hugh, son of Hugh Roe, son of Niall Garv, son
of Turlough of the wise O'Donnell, who ordered the part of this
Life which was in Latin to be put into Gaelic ; and who ordered
the part that was in difficult Gaelic to be modified, so that it might
be clear and comprehensible to every one ; and who gathered and
put together the parts of it that were scattered through the old
1 This scene took place, as Dr. Reeves has shown, " just after midnight
between Saturday the 8th and Sunday the Qth of June, in the year 597."
I9o LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
Books of Erin ; and who dictated it out of his own mouth with great
labour and a great expenditure of time in studying how he should
arrange all its parts in their proper places, as they are left here in
writing by us ; and in love and friendship for his illustrious saint,
relative, and patron, to whom he was devoutly attached. It was in
the Castle of Port-na-tri-namhad [Lifford] that his Life was indited,
when were fulfilled 12 years and 20 and 500 and 1000 of the age of
the Lord."
This life, written in a large vellum folio, is preserved in
the Bodleian Library at Oxford and has never yet been
printed.1
The remains of Columcille, which after a three days' wake
were interred in lona, were left undisturbed for close upon a
hundred years. They were afterwards disinterred and placed
within a splendid shrine of gold and silver, which, in due time,
became the prey of the marauding Norsemen. The belief is
very general that his remains found their last resting-place in
Downpatrick, along with those of St. Patrick and St. Brigit.
The present appearance of the spot where they are supposed
to lie, may be gathered from the indignant verses 2 of a member
of a now defunct literary body, to which I had the honour of
belonging some years ago, one of those numerous Irish literary
societies which produce verses as thick as leaves in Vallombrosa.
" I stood at a grave by the outer wall
Of the Strangers' Church in Down,
All lorn and lost in neglect, and crossed
By the Church of the Strangers' frown.
All lorn and waste, and with footsteps crossed
The grave of our Patrons Three,
Not a leaf to wave o'er that lonely grave
That seemed not a grave to me !
1 It is to be hoped that it may soon see the light as one of the volumes
whose publication is contemplated by the new Irish Texts Society. The
copy of it used by Colgan is now back in the Franciscans' Library in
Dublin, a beautiful vellum written for Niall 6g O'Neill.
2 P. 50 of a little volume called " Lays and Lyrics of the Pan-Celtic
Society," long out of print, by P. O'C. MacLaughlin.
COLUMCILLE 191
But a trench where some traitor was flung of yore —
'Twas " a sight for a f oeman's eye " !
Where Patrick still and Saint Columbkille
And the Dove * of the Oak Tree lie.
Those men who spoke bravely of rending chains
(And never a fetter broke !)
Those men who adored the flashing sword
(When never a tocsin spoke !)
Those little men, who are very great
In marble and bronze, are still
The city's pride, whilst that trench holds Bride
And Patrick and Columbkille ! "
1 Evidently alluding to the passage in her Irish life which says, " Her
:ype among created things is as the Dove among birds, the vine among
:rees, and the sun above stars." There is a Latin distich on this grave in
Downpatrick which I have seen somewhere,
In burgo Duno tumulo tumulantur in uno
Brigida Patricius atquc Columba plus.
CHAPTER XVI
THE FIRST SCHOOLS OF CHRISTIAN IRELAND
ST. PATRICK and the early Christians of the fifth century
spent much of their time and labour in the conversion of
pagans and the building of churches. Columcille and the
leading churchmen of the sixth century, on the other hand,
gave themselves up more to the foundation of monastic
institutions and the conduct of schools. They belonged to
what is well known in Irish ecclesiastical history as the second
Order of Saints. The first Order was composed of Patrick and
his associates, bishops filled with piety, founders of churches,
three hundred and fifty in number, mostly Franks, Romans,
and Britons, but with some Scots [i.e. Irish] also amongst them.
These worshipped, says the ancient " Catalogue of the Saints,"
one head — Christ, and followed one leader — Patrick. They
had one tonsure, one celebration of the Mass, and one Easter.
They mixed freely in the society of women, because they feared
not the wind of temptation, and this first Order of Saints, as it
is called, is reckoned by the Irish to have lasted during four
reigns.
The next Order of Saints had few bishops but many priests,
this was the order to which Columcille belonged, and most of
the saints who founded the great schools of Ireland which in
192
FIRST SCHOOLS OF CHRISTIAN IRELAND 193
the following century became so flourishing and spread their
fame throughout Europe, as those of Ciaran and Finnian and
Brendan, and a score of others. This Order shunned all
association with women, and would not have them in their
monasteries.1 These saints whilst worshipping God as their
head, and celebrating one Easter and having one tonsure, yet
had different rites for celebrating, and different rules for living.
The rite with which they celebrated Mass they are said to
have secured from the British saints, St. David, St. Gildas, and
others. They also lasted for four reigns, or, roughly speaking,
during the last three quarters of the sixth century.
After these came what is called the third Order of Saints who
appear in their time to have been pre-eminent amongst the
other Christians, and to have been mostly anchorites, who
lived on herbs and supported themselves by such alms as they
were given, despising all things earthly and all things fleshly.
They observed Easter differently, they had different tonsures,
they had different rules of life, and different rites for cele-
brating Mass. They are said to have numbered about a
hundred and to have lasted down to the time of the great
plague in 664.
This third Order, says the writer of the "Catalogue of Saints,"
who gives their names, was holy, the second holier, but the first
Order was most holy. " The first glowed like the sun in the
fervour of their charity, the second cast a pale radiance like the
moon, the third shone like the aurora. These three Orders the
blessed Patrick foreknew, enlightened by heavenly wisdom,
when in prophetic vision he saw at first all Ireland ablaze, and
afterwards only the mountains on fire, and at last saw lamps
lit in the valleys."
By the middle of the sixth century Ireland had been honey-
ombed from shore to shore with schools, monasteries, colleges,
*
1 It is a common tradition that Columcille would not allow a cow on
lona, because, said he, " where there is a cow there will be a woman " !
This tradition is entirely contradicted, however, by Adamnan's life.
N
I94 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
(and foundations of all kinds belonging to the Christian com-
munity, and books had multiplied to a marvellous extent. At
the same time the professional bards flourished in such numbers
that Keating says that " nearly a third of the men of Ireland
belonged, about that period, to the poetic order." Omitting for
the present the consideration of the bards and the non-Christian
literature of poem and saga — mostly anonymous — which they
produced, we must take a rapid survey of some of the most
important of the Christian schools, whose pious professors,
whose number, and whose learning, secured for Ireland the
title of the Island of Saints. We have already seen how the
three patron saints of Ireland established their schools in
Armagh, Kildare, and lona, and their example was followed
by hundreds.
St. Enda, the son of a king of Oriel, after having studied at
some school in Great Britain (probably with St. Ninian — who
is said to have been himself an Irishman — at his noble
monastery of Candida Casa in Galloway, built about the
year 400), and after travelling through various parts of
Ireland, settled down finally about the year 483 in the
rocky and inaccessible island of Aran Mor, and was the
first of those holy men who have won for it the appel-
lation of Aran of the Saints. " One hundred and twenty-
seven saints sleep in the little square yard around Killeany
Church " x alone, and we are told that the countless numbers
of saints who have mingled their clay with the holy soil of
Aran will never be known until the day of Judgment.
Here most of the saints of the second Order repaired sooner or
later, to be instructed by, or to hold converse with St. Enda ;
amongst them Brendan the Voyager, whose wanderings, under
the title of Navigatio Brendani^ became so well known in later
ages to all mediaeval Europe. To him also came St. Finnian
of Clonard, who was himself celebrated in later days as the '
"Tutor of the Saints of Erin." From the remote north came
1 Dr. Healy's " Ireland's Schools and Scholars," p. 169.
FIRST SCHOOLS OF CHRISTIAN IRELAND 195
Finnian of Moville, Columcille's first teacher, and Ciaran, the
carpenter's son, the illustrious founder of Clonmacnois. St.
Jarlath of Tuam was there too, with St. Carthach the elder,
of Lismore, and with St. Keevin of Glendalough. St.
Columcille1 himself was amongst Enda's visitors, and tore
himself away with the utmost difficulty, solacing himself by
recourse to the Irish muse as was his wont —
" Farewell from me to Ara's Isle,
Her smile is at my heart no more,
No more to me the boon is given
With hosts of heaven to walk her shore.
How far, alas ! how far, alas !
Have I to pass from Ara's view,
To mix with men from Mona's fen,
With men from Alba's mountains blue.
Bright orb of Ara, Ara's sun,
Ah ! softly run through Ara's sky,
To rest beneath thy beam were sweeter
Than lie where Paul and Peter lie,
O Ara, darling of the West,
Ne'er be he blest who loves not thee,
O God, cut short her foeman's breath,
Let Hell and Death his portion be.
O Ara, darling of the West,
Ne'er be he blest who loves not thee,
Herdless and childless may he go
In endless woe his doom is dree.
O Ara, darling of the West,
Ne'er be he blest who loves thee not,
When angels wing from heaven on high
And leave the sky for this dear spot." 3
1 There is a story of Columcille when in Aran discovering the grave
an " abbot of Jerusalem " who had come to see Enda, and died there,
rinted by Kuno Meyer from Rawlinson B. 512 in the " Gaelic Journal,"
1. iv. p. 162.
1 Literally : " Farewell from me to Ara, it is it anguishes my heart not to
in the west among her waves, amid groups of the saints of heaven. It
far, alas ! it is far, alas ! I have been sent from Ara West, out towards
1 96 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
Another early school was that founded by St. Finnian at
Cluain Eraird, better known under its corrupt form Clonard,
a spot hard by the river Boyne, to which students from both
north and south resorted in great numbers. Finnian, who
was of the Clanna Rury, or Irian race, had been baptized by
Bishop Fortchern, who — so quickly did the Christian cause
progress — was a grandson of King Laeghaire, who withstood
St. Patrick. This Fortchern, too, like Brigit's favourite
bishop, was a skilled artificer in bronze and metal, a calling
to which many of the early saints evinced a strong bias.
Clonard even during Finnian's lifetime became a great school,
and three thousand students are said to have been gathered
round it, amongst them the so-called Twelve Apostles of Erin.
These are Ciaran of Clonmacnois and Ciaran of Saigher, who
is patron saint of Ossory ; Brendan of Birr, the " prophet,"
and Brendan of Clonfert, the " navigator " ; Columba of
Tir-da-glass and Columcille ; Mobhi of Glasnevin and—
tnfaustum nomen ! — Rodan of Lothra or Lorrha ; Senanus of
Iniscathy, whose name is known to the lovers of the poet
Moore ; Ninnidh of Loch Erne ; Lasserian, and St. Cainnech
of Kilkenny, known in Scotland as Kenneth, and second in
that country only to St. Columcille and St. Brigit in popularity.
The school of Clonard was founded about the year 520, when,
to quote the rather jingling hymn from St. Finnian's office —
" Re versus in Clonardiam
Ad cathedram lecturae
Opponit diligentiam
Ad studium scripturae."
the population of Mona to visit the Albanachs. Ara sun, oh Ara sun, mj
affection lies buried in her in the west, it is the same to be beneath
pure soil as to be beneath the soil of Paul and Peter. Ara blessed, 0
Ara blessed, woe to him who is hostile to her, may he be given for it
shortness of life and hell. Ara blessed, O Ara blessed, woe to him who is
hostile to her, may their cattle decay and their children, and be he hin
on the other side (of this life) in evil plight. O Ara blessed, O Ara bles
woe to him who is hostile to her," etc.
FIRST SCHOOLS OF CHRISTIAN IRELAND 197
The numbers who attended his teaching are given in another
verse —
" Trium virorum millium
Sorte fit doctor humilis,
Verbi his fudit fluvium
Ut fons emanans rivulis."
Like all the other early Irish foundations which attained to
wealth and dignity before the ninth century, Clonard suffered
in proportion to its fame. It was after that date plundered and
destroyed twelve times, and was fourteen times burnt down
either wholly or in part. That being so, it is not much to be
wondered at that there only remains a single surviving literary
work of this school, which is the u Mystical Interpretation of
the Ancestry of our Lord Jesus Christ," by St. Aileran the
Wise, one of Finnian's successors, who died of the great plague
in 664. This piece, like so many others, was found in the
Swiss monastery of St. Gall, whither it had been brought by
some monks from Ireland. The editors who printed it for the
Benedictines in the seventeenth century say that, although the
writer did not belong to their Order, they publish it because
he " unfolded the meaning of sacred scripture with so much
learning and ingenuity that every student of the sacred
volume, and especially preachers of the Divine Word, will
regard the publication as most acceptable." The learned
editors could have hardly paid the Irish writer a higher
compliment. "A Short Moral Explanation of the Sacred
Names " is another still existing fragment of Aileran's, and
"whether we consider the style of the latinity, the learning,
or the ingenuity of the writer," says Dr. Healy, " it is equally
marvellous and equally honourable to the school of Clonard."
Aileran is said to have also written lives of St. Patrick, St.
Brigit, and St. Fechin of Fore, and to be the original author
of a litany, part Irish, part Latin, preserved in the Yellow
look of Lecan.
Another great Irish college was Clonfert on the Shannon,
198 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
founded about the year 556 by Brendan the Navigator, who,
like Finnian, came of the Irian race, being descended from
Fergus mac Roy.1 He was born towards the close of the
fifth century, and his school, too, became very famous, having,
it is said, produced as many as three thousand monks. The
influence of the Navlgatio Brendani^ by whomsoever written,
was immense, and was felt through all Europe, so that in
many of the great continental libraries good MS. copies of
it, sometimes very ancient, may be found.2 But perhaps
Brendan's grand-nephew and pupil may have indirectly in-
fluenced European literature in a still more important manner.
This was Fursa, afterwards St. Fursa, whose visions were
known all over Ireland, Great Britain, and France. There
can be no doubt about the substantial accuracy of St. Fursa's
lite, for Bede himself, who dedicates a good deal of space to
Fursa's visions,3 refers to it. It must have been written within
ten or fifteen years after his death, because it refers to the
plague and the great eclipse of the sun which happened last
year^ that is 664. Now Dante was acquainted with Bede's
writings, for he expressly mentions him, and Bede's account
of Fursa and Fursa's own life may have been familiar to him,
and furnished him with the groundwork of part of the Divine
Comedy of which it seems a kind of prototype.4
1 See p. 69, note.
2 It has been edited both by a Frenchman, M. Jubinal, and a German, Karl
Schroeder, from eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth century MSS. preserved
in Paris, Leipsic, and Wolfenbuttel, and by Cardinal Moran from, I believe,
a ninth-century one in the Vatican. Giraldus Cambrensis alludes to it as
well known in his time, " Haec autem si quis audire gestierit qui de vita
Brendani scriptus est libellum legat" ("Top. Hib.," II. ch. 43). There
is a copy of Brendan's acts in the so-called Book of Kilkenny in Marsh's
Library, Dublin, a MS. of probably the fourteenth century.
s " Eccles. Hist.," lib. iii. c. 19. He calls him " Furseus, verbo et actibus
clarus sed et egregiis insignis virtutibus," and dedicates five pages of Mayer
and Lumby's edition to an account of him and his visions.
4 Father O'Hanlon, in his great work on the Irish saints, has pointed
out a large number of close parallels between Fursa's vision and Dante's
poem which seem altogether too striking tc be fortuitous. (Sec vol. i.
FIRST SCHOOLS OF CHRISTIAN IRELAND 199
Brendan's own adventures and his view of hell, which he
was shown by the devil, may also have been known to Dante.
Brendan prepared three vessels with thirty men in each, some
clerics, some laymen, and with these, says his Irish life in
the Book of Lismore, he sailed to seek the Promised Land,
which, evidently influenced by the old pagan traditions of
Moy Mell x and Hy Brassil, he expected to find as an island
in the Western Sea, and so says his Irish life poetically —
"Brendan, son of Finnlug, sailed over the wave-voice of the
strong-maned sea, and over the storm of the green-sided waves,
and over the mouths of the marvellous awful bitter ocean, where
they saw the multitude of the furious red-mouthed monsters with
abundance of the great sea-whales. And they found beautiful
marvellous islands, yet they tarried not therein."
Like Sindbad in the Arabian tales,2 they land upon the back
of a great whale as if it had been solid land. There they
celebrated Easter. They endured much peril from the sea.
" On a certain day, as they were on the marvellous ocean " —
this adjective is strongly indicative of the spirit in which the
Celt regards the works of nature — " they beheld the deep bitter
streams and the vast black whirlpools of the strong-maned sea,
and in them their vessels were being constrained to founder
because of the greatness of the storm." Brendan, however,
cried to the sea, " It is enough for thee, O mighty sea, to
drown me alone, but let this folk escape thee," and on hearing
pp. 115-120.) There are a poem and a litany attributed to St. Fursa in
the MS. H. I. II. in Trinity College, Dublin. The visions of Purgatory
seen by Dryhthelm, a monk of Melrose, as recorded by Bede, which are
later than St. Fursa's vision, are conceived very much in the same style,
only are much more doctrinal in their purgatorial teaching. " Tracing
the course of thought upwards," says Sir Francis Palgrave ("History of
Normandy and England "), " we have no difficulty in deducing the poetic
genealogy of Dante's ' Inferno' to the Milesian Fursaeus."
1 See above, p. 97.
2 The same story, as Whitley Stokes points out, is told in two ninth-
century lives of St. Machut, so that a tenth-century version of Sindbad's
first voyage cannot have been the origin of it.
200 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
his cry the sea grew calm. It was after this that Brendan got
a view of hell.
" On a certain day," says the Irish Life, " that they were on the
sea, the devil came in a form old, awful, hideous, foul, hellish, and
sat on the rail of the vessel before Brendan, and none of them saw
him save Brendan alone. Brendan asked him why he had come
before his proper time, that is, before the time of the great resurrec-
tion. ' For this have I come,' said the devil, ' to seek my punishment
in the deep closes of this black, dark sea.' Brendan inquired of him,
' What is this, where is that infernal place ? ' ' Sad is that,' said the
devil ; ' no one can see it and remain alive afterwards.' Howbeit the
devil there revealed the gate of hell to Brendan, and Brendan beheld
that rough, hot prison full of stench, full of flame, full of filth, full of
the camps of the poisonous demons, full of wailing and screaming
and hurt and sad cries and great lamentations and moaning and
handsmiting of the sinful folks, and a gloomy, mournful life in hearts
of pain, in igneous prisons, in streams of the rows of eternal fire, in
the cup of eternal sorrow and death, without limit, without end ; in
black, dark swamps, in fonts of heavy flame, in abundance of woe
and death and torments, and fetters, and feeble wearying combats,
with the awful shouting of the poisonous demons, in a night ever-
dark, ever-cold, ever-stinking, ever-foul, ever-misty, ever-harsh,
ever-long, ever-stifling, deadly, destructive, gloomy, fiery-haired, of
the loathsome bottom of hell. On sides of mountains of eternal
fire, without rest, without stay, were hosts of demons dragging the
sinners into prisons . . . black demons ; stinking fires ; streams of
poison ; cats scratching ; hounds rending ; dogs baying ; demons
yelling ; stinking lakes ; great swamps ; dark pits ; deep glens ; high
mountains ; hard crags ; . . . winds bitter, wintry ; snow frozen,
ever-dropping ; flakes red, fiery ; faces base, darkened ; demons
swift, greedy ; tortures vast, various." *
This is one of the earliest attempts in literature at the pour-
trayal of an Inferno.
1 This is evidently the passage upon which Keating's description of hell
in the " Three Shafts of Death," Leabh. III. allt. ix., x., xi., is modelled. He
quite outdoes his predecessor in declamation and exuberance of alliterative
adjectives. Compare also the description in the vision of Adamnan of the
infernal regions as it is elaborated in the copy in the Leabhar Breac, in
contradistinction to the more sober colouring of the older Leabhar na
h-Uidhre.
FIRST SCHOOLS OF CHRISTIAN IRELAND 201
After a seven-years' voyage Brendan returned home to his
own country without having found his Earthly Paradise, and
his people and his follc at home " brought him," says the Irish
Life, "treasures and gifts as if they were giving them to
God " !
His foster-mother St. Ita now advised him not to put forth
in search of that glorious land in those dead stained skins which
formed his currachs, for it was a holy land he sought, and he
should look for it in wooden vessels. Then Brendan built
himself "a great marvellous vessel, distinguished and huge."
He first sailed to Aran to consort with St. Enda, but after a
month he heaved anchor and sailed once more into the
West.
He reaches the Isle of Paradise after many adventures, and is
invited on shore by an old man " without any human raiment,
but all his body full of bright white feathers like a dove
or a sea-mew, and it was almost the speech of an angel that
he had." "O ye toilsome men," he said, "O hallowed
pilgrims, O folk that entreat the heavenly rewards, O ever-
weary life expecting this land, stay a little now from your
labour." The land is described in terms that forcibly record
the delights of the pagan Elysium of Moy Mell, and prove how
intimately the Brendan legend is bound up with primitive pre-
Christian mythological beliefs. " The delightful fields of the
land " are described as " radiant, famous, lovable," — " a land
odorous, flower-smooth, blessed, a land many-melodied, musical,
shouting-for-joy, unmournful." " Happy," said the old man,
"shall he be with well-deservingness and with good deeds,
whom B randan, son of Finnlug, shall call into union with him
on that side to inhabit for ever and ever the island whereon we
stand."
But better known — at least in ecclesiastical history — than
even St. Brendan, is St. Cummian, surnamed "fada" or the
Long, who was one of his successors in the school of Clonfert,
and who perished in or a little before the great plague of 664.
202 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
There are two hymns, one by himself in Latin,1 and one in
Irish by his tutor, Colman Ua Cluasaigh [Clooasy] of Cork,
preserved in the " Liber Hymnorum." But his great achieve-
ment was his celebrated letter on the Paschal question addressed
to his friend Segienus, the abbot of lona. The question of
when to celebrate Easter day was one which long sundered
the British and Irish Churches from the rest of Europe, and
has, as students of ecclesiastical history know, given rise to all
sorts of conjectures as to the independence of these churches.
The charge against the Irish was that they celebrated Easter
on any day from the fourteenth to the twentieth day of the
moon, even on the fourteenth if it should happen to be Sunday,
but the fourteenth was a Jewish festival and the Council of Nice
had, in 325, declared it to be unlawful to celebrate the Christian
Easter on a Jewish festival.2 The Irish had obtained their own
doctrine of Easter from the East, through Gaul, which was
largely open to Eastern influence ; also the Irish used the old
Roman cycle of 84 years, not the newer and more correct
Alexandrian one of 19 years. The consequence was the
scandal of having different Churches of Christendom celebrating
Easter on different days, and some mourning when others were
1 Beginning : —
" Celebra Juda festa Christi gaudia
Apostulorum exultans memoria.
Claviculari Petri primi pastoris
Piscium rete evangelii corporis
Alleluia."
This hymn, says Dr. Todd, " bears evident marks of the high antiquity
claimed for it, and there seem no reasonable grounds for doubting its
authenticity."
2 " The correct system lays down three principles. First, Easter day
must be always a Sunday, never on but next after the fourteenth day of the
moon ; secondly, that fourteenth day of the full moon should be that
on or next after the vernal equinox ; and thirdly, the equinox itself was
invariably assigned to the 2ist of March" (Dr. Healy's " Ireland's Schools
and Scholars," p. 234). At Rome the i8th had been regarded as the equinox ;
St. Patrick, however, rightly laid it down that the equinox took place on •
the 2ist.
FIRST SCHOOLS OF CHRISTIAN IRELAND 203
feasting, a scandal which the Epistle of Cummian was designed
to put an end to.
" I call this letter," says Professor G. Stokes,1 " a marvellous con-
position because of the vastness of its learning ; it quotes besides the
Scriptures and Latin authors, Greek writers like Origen, and Cyril,
Pachomius the head and reformer of Egyptian monasticism, and
Damascius the last of the celebrated neo-Platonic philosophers of
Athens, who lived about the year 500, and wrote all his works in
Greek. Cummian discusses the calendars of the Macedonians,
Hebrews, and Copts, giving us the Hebrew, Greek, and Egyptian
names of months and cycles, and tells us that he had been sent as
one of a deputation of learned men a few years before to ascertain
:he practice of the Church of Rome. When they came to Rome
hey lodged in one hospital with a Greek and a Hebrew, an Egyptian,
and a Scythian, who told them that the whole world celebrated the
Roman and not the Irish Easter."
Cummian throughout this letter displays the true spirit of a
cholar, he humbly apologises for his presumption in addressing
uch holy men, and calls God to witness that he is actuated by
no spirit of pride or contempt for others. When the new
cycle of 532 years was first introduced into Ireland he did not
at once accept it, but held his peace and took no side in the
matter, because he did not think himself wiser than the
rlebrews, Greeks, and Latins, nor did he venture to disdain
the food he had not yet tasted. So he retired for a whole year
nto the study of the question, to examine for himself the facts
of history, the nature of the various cycles in use, and the
testimony of Scripture.
There is another book, "De Mensura Pcenitentiarum,"
ascribed to Cummian and printed in Migne ; and there is a
poem on his death by his tutor, St. Colman, who was carried
off by the same plague a short time after him.2
1 Late professor of Ecclesiastical History in Dublin University. See
'Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy," May, 1892, p. 195.
* The first verse runs thus : —
" Ni beir Luimneach for a druim
Di sil Muimhneach i Leth Cuinn
Marban in noi bu fiu do
Do Cuimmine mac Fiachno " —
204 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
The great institution presided over by St. Cummian was
flourishing in full vigour at the time of the first incursions of
the Northmen. It is frequently mentioned in the Irish Annals
as a place of note and learning. Turgesius the Dane, attracted
by so fair a booty, promptly plundered and burnt it to the
ground. Again and again it was rebuilt, and again and again
the same fate befell it. The monastery and the school
survived, however, until the coming of the Normans, and the
"Four Masters" under the year 1170 record the death of one
of its teachers, Cormac O'Lumlini, whom they pathetically
designate u the remnant of the sages of Erin," for by this time
Clonfert had been six times burnt and four times plundered.
Even a greater school, however, than Clonfert, was that
founded by St. Ciaran [Keeran], the carpenter's son, beside a
curve in the Shannon, at Clonmacnois, not far from Athlone,
about the year 544. He had himself been educated by St.
Finnian of Clonard, and he died at the early age of thirty-
three, immediately after laying the foundations of what was
destined to become the greatest Christian college in Ireland.1
The monastery and cells of St. Ciaran rapidly grew into a
city, to which students flocked from far and near. In one
sense the College of Clonmacnois had an advantage over all its
rivals, for it belonged to no one race or clan. Its abbots and
teachers were drawn from many different tribes, and situated
as it was, in almost the centre of the island, all the great races,
Erimonians, Eberians, Irians, and Ithians, resorted to it
impartially, and it became a real university. There the
O'Conors, kings of Connacht, had their own separate church ;
there the Southern Ui Neill reared apart their own cathedral ;
there the MacDermots, princes of Moylurg, and the
" The lower Shannon bears not upon its surface, of Munster race in Leath
Cuinn, any corpse in boat, equal to him, to Cuimin, son of Fiachna." His
corpse was apparently brought home by water.
1 There is a verse ascribed to Ciaran in the " Chronicon Scotorum,"
beginning " Darerca mo mhathair-si," and a poem ascribed to him in
H. i. ii. Trinity College, Dublin.
FIRST SCHOOLS OF CHRISTIAN IRELAND 205
O'Kellys, kings of Hy Mainy, had each their own mortuary
chapels ; there the Southerns built one round tower, the
O'Rorkes another ; and there too the Mac Carthys of Munster
had a burial-place. Who, even at this day, has not heard of
the glories of Clonmacnois, of its ruins, its graves, its crosses ;
of its churchyard, which possesses a greater variety of sculp-
tured and decorated stones than perhaps all the rest of Ireland
put together, and of which the Irish poet beautifully sang so
long ago—
" In a quiet watered land, a land of roses,
Stands St. Ciaran's city fair,
And the warriors of Erin in their famous generations,
Slumber there.
There beneath the dewy hill-side sleep the noblest
Of the clan of Conn,
Each below his stone, with name in branching Ogham,
And the sacred knot thereon.
There they laid to rest the seven kings of Tara,
There the sons of Cairbre sleep,
Battle-banners of the Gael that in Ciaran's Plain of Crosses,
Now their final hosting keep.
And in Clonmacnois they laid the men of Teffia,
And right many a lord of Breagh.
Deep the sod above Clan Creide and Clan Conaill,
Kind in hall and fierce in fray.
Many and many a son of Conn the Hundred-Fighter
In the red earth lies at rest,
Many a blue eye of Clan Colman the turf covers,
Many a swan-white breast." x
1 Thus admirably translated by my friend Mr. Rolleston in " Poems
and Ballads of Young Ireland," Dublin, 1888, a little volume which seems
to have been the precursor of a considerable literary movement in Ireland.
Literally : " The city of Ciaran of Clonmacnois, a dewy-bright red-rose
town, of its royal seed, of lasting fame, the hosts in the pure-streamed
peaceful town. The nobles of the clan of Conn are in the flag-laid brown-
sloped churchyard, a knot or a branch above each body and a fair correct
name in Ogam. The sons of Cairbre over the seven territories, the seven
great princes from Tara, many a sheltering standard on a field of battle is
206 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
Some of the most distinguished scholars of Ireland, if not of
Europe, were educated at Clonmacnois, including Alcuin, the
most learned man at the French court, who remembered his
alma mater so affectionately that he extracted from King
Charles of France a gift of fifty shekels of silver, to which he
added fifty more of his own, and sent them to the brotherhood
of Clonmacnois as a gift, with a quantity of olive oil for the
Irish bishops. His affectionate letter to "his blessed master
and pious father " Colgan, chief professor at Clonmacnois, is
still extant.
This Colgu, or Colgan, himself wrote a book in Irish, called
"The Besom of Devotion," which appears to be now lost.
A litany of his still remains. The great eleventh-century
annalist, Tighearnach, was an alumnus of Clonmacnois. So,
too, was the reputed author of the " Chronicon Scotorum,"
O'Malone, in 1123. The Annals of Clonmacnois was one
of the books in the hands of the " Four Masters," but it is now
lost, and a different book called by the same name (the original
with the people of Ciaran's Plain of Crosses. The men of Teffia, the
tribes of Breagh were buried beneath the clay of Cluain[macnois]. The
valiant and hospitable are yonder beneath the sod, the race of Creide and
the Clan Conaill. Numerous are the sons of Conn of the Battles, with red
clay and turf covering them, many a blue eye and white limb under the
earth of Clan Colman's tomb." The first verses run in modern spelling
thus:
" Cathair Chiarain Chluain-mic-Nois
Baile drucht-solas, dearg-rois.
Da shil rioghraidh is buan bladh
Sluaigh fa'n sith-bhaile sruth-ghlan.
Ataid uaisle cloinne Chuinn
Fa'n reilig leacaigh learg-dhuinn
Snaoidhm no Craobh os gach cholain
Agus ainm caomh ceart Oghaim."
The clan of Conn here mentioned are principally the Ui Neill and their
correlatives. Teffia is something equivalent to Longford, and Breagh to
Meath. Clan Creide are the O' Conors of Connacht, and the Clan Colman
principally means the O'Melaughlins and their kin. " Colman mor, a quo
Clann Cholmain ie Maoileachlain cona fflaithibh " (Mac Firbis MS. Book
of Genealogies, p. 161 of O'Curry's transcript). Colman was the brother
of King Diarmuid, who was slain in 552.
FIRST SCHOOLS OF CHRISTIAN IRELAND 207
of which has also perished) was translated into English by
Macgeoghegan in I627-1 The celebrated Leabhar na h-Uidhre
[Lowar na Heera] or "Book of the Dun Cow," compiled
about the year uoo, emanated from this centre of learning.
Like Clonfert, and every other home of Irish civilisation, the
city of Clonmacnois fell a prey to the barbarians. The North-
men plundered it or burnt it, or both, on ten separate occasions.
Turgesius, their leader, set up his wife Ota as a kind of
priestess to deliver oracles from its high altar;2 and some of
he Irish themselves, reduced to a state of barbarism by the
lorrors of the period, laid their sacrilegious hands upon its
loly places ; and afterwards the English of Athlone stepped in
nd completed its destruction. It now remains only a ruin and
name.
Another very celebrated school was that of Bangor, on
Belfast Loch, founded by Comgall, the friend of Columcille,
>etween 550 and 560. It soon became crowded with scholars,
nd next to Armagh it was certainly the greatest school of the
northern province, and produced men of the highest eminence
kt home and abroad. Its fame reached far across the sea. St.
Bernard called it "a noble institution, which was inhabited by
hiany thousands of monks;" and Joceline of Furness, in the
twelfth century, called it "a fruitful vine breathing the odour
j)f salvation, whose offshoots extended not only over all Ireland,
put far beyond the seas into foreign countries, and filled many
lands with its abounding fruitfulness."
The most distinguished of Bangor's sons of learning were
Columbanus, the evangeliser of portions of Burgundy and Lom-
rdy ; St. Gall, the evangeliser of Switzerland ; Dungal, the
tronomer ; and later on, in the twelfth century, Malachy
Published a couple of years ago by the late Father Murphy, S.J., for
ic Royal Antiquarian Society of Ireland.
- " Airgid cealla ardnaomh Ereann uile ocus as ar altoir Cluana mac Nois
bhereadh Otta bean Tuirghes uirigheall do gach ae[n] " (Mac Firbis
[S. of Genealogies, p. 768 in O' Curry's transcript). Also " Gael and
" p. 13.
208 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
O'Morgair, who, though not known as an author, distinguished
himself in the province of Church discipline.
The lives of St. Columbanus and of St. Gall belong rather
to foreign than to Irish history, but we may glance at them
again in another place. Dungal, poet, astronomer, and
theologian, was also like them, for a time, an exile. His identity
is uncertain ; the "Four Masters" mention twenty-two persons
of the same name between the years 744 and 1015, but his
Irish nationality is certain, and he calls himself " Hibernicus
exul " in his poem addressed to his patron Charlemagne. He
appears to have died in the Irish monastery at Bobbio, in North
Italy, to which he left his library, and amongst other books the
celebrated Antiphonary of Bangor, his possession of which seems
to warrant us in supposing that Bangor was his original college.
He appears to have been a close friend of Charlemagne's, and
in 811 he wrote him his celebrated letter, explanatory of the
two solar eclipses which had taken place the year before. The
emperor could apparently find at his court no other astronomer
of sufficient learning to explain the phenomena. Later on we
find Dungal, at the request of Lothaire, Charlemagne's grand-
son, opening a school at Pavia to civilise the Lombards, to]
which institution great numbers of students flocked from
every quarter. Dungal may, in fact, be regarded as the.:
founder of the University of Pavia. His greatest effort whilst
in Pavia was his work against the Iconoclasts. Dungal's attack
upon the cultured Spanish bishop, Claudius, who championed
them, as it was the first, so it appears to have been the ablest
blow struck ; and Western iconoclasm seemed to have for the
time received a mortal wound from his hand.1 Besides his long
eulogy on his friend and patron Charlemagne, several other smaller
1 Claudius was Bishop of Turin, and a man of much culture and ability ;
so disgusted was he with the congregation of ignorant Italian bishops-
culture was then at the lowest ebb in Italy — before whom he argued his
case that he called them a congregatio asinorum, and says Zimmer, " Ein
Ire, Dungal, musste fur sie die Vertheidigung des Bilderdienstes iiber-
nehmen."
FIRST SCHOOLS OF CHRISTIAN IRELAND 209
poems of his survive, showing him to have been — like almost
all Irishmen of that date — no mere pedant and student.
Like almost all the more famous and attractive of the Irish
colleges, Bangor suffered fearfully from the attacks of the
northern pirates, who, according to St. Bernard, slew there as
many as nine hundred monks. " Not a cross, not even a
stone," says Dr. Healy, " now remains to mark the site of the
famous monastery, whose crowded cloisters for a thousand
years overlooked the pleasant islets and broad waters of Inver
Becne." It has shared the fate of its compeers :
etiam periere ruina\
It would prove too tedious to enumerate the other Irish
colleges which dotted the island in the sixth and seventh
centuries. The most remarkable of them besides those that
I have mentioned were Moville, at the head of Loch Cuan
or Strangford Lough, in the County Down, founded by St.
Finnian, who was born before 500, and who afterwards became
known as Frigidius, Bishop of Lucca, in Switzerland. Colman,
whose hymn is preserved in the " Liber Hymnorum," and
Marianus Scotus, the Chronicler, were alumni of Moville.
Cluain Eidnech, or Clonenagh, the " Ivy Meadow," was
founded by St. Fintan, near Maryborough, in the present
Queen's County. Angus the Culdee, who with its Abbot
Maelruain is said to have composed the Martyrology of
jTallaght prior to 792, was its greatest ornament. Of his
Irish works we shall have more to say later on. Clonenagh
(suffered so much from the Northmen, that its great foundation
jhad already in the twelfth century dwindled to a parochial
lurch ; in the nineteenth it is a green mound.
Glendalough, founded by the celebrated St. Kevin,1 became
a college of much note. St. Moling, to whom a great
Pronounced " Keevin," not " Kevin." The Irish form is Caoimh-
=keev, " aoi " being in Irish always pronounced like ce, and " mh " like v]
jhinn, the " g " being aspirated is scarcely pronounced.
o
210 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
number of Irish poems x are ascribed, was one of his successors
in the seventh century, and his life seems to have taken
peculiar hold upon the imagination of the populace, for he has
more poems — many of them evident forgeries — attributed to
him than we find ascribed to any of the saints except to
Columcille ; and he has a place amongst the four great
prophets of Erin.2 It was he who procured the remission of
1 The celebrated Evangelistarium, or Book of Moling, was, with its case
or cover, deposited in Trinity College, Dublin, ini the last century by the
Kavanaghs of Borris. Giraldus Cambrensis classes Moling as a prophet
with Merlin, and as a saint with Patrick and Columba. One of the
prophecies assigned to him is given by O'Curry, MS. Mat., p. 427. The
oldest copy of any of Moling's poems is in the monastery of St. Paul in
Carinthia, contained in a MS. originally brought from Augia Dives, or
Reichenau. It is in the most perfect metre, and runs :—
" Is en immo niada sas
Is nau tholl diant eslinn guas,
Is lestar fas, is crann crin
Nach digni toil ind rig tuas."
(" He is a bird round which a trap closes,
He is a leaky bark in weakness of peril,
He is an empty vessel, he is a withered tree
Who doth not do the will of the King above.")
I.e., "Iseanum a n-iadhann sas / is nau' (long) thollta darb' eislinn guais.
Is leastar fas (folamh) " is crann crion, [an te] nach ndeanann toil an righ
shuas."
The poem is also given in the Book of Leinster, and contains eight
verses. One would perhaps have expected the third line to run, " is crann
crin is lestar fas." The St. Paul MS., which is of the eighth century, con-
tains two of Molling's poems, and they scarcely differ in wording or
orthography from copies in MSS. six hundred years later.
2 Patrick, Columcille, and Berchan of Clonsast, are the others. Even
the English settlers had heard of their fame. Baron Finglas, writing i
Henry VIII.'s reign, says, "The four saints, St. Patrick, St. Columb, S
Braghane [i.e., Berchan], and St. Moling, which many hundred y
agone made prophecy that Englishmen should have conquered Irela
and said that the said Englishmen should keep their owne laws, and as
soon as they should leave, and fall to Irish order, then they should decay,
the experience whereof is proved true." (From Ryan's " History and
Antiquities of the co. Carlow," p. 93.) A still more curious allusion to the ,
four Irish prophets is one in the Book of Howth, a small vellum folio of
the sixteenth century, written in thirteen different hands, published in the
Calendar of State Papers. " Men say," recounts the anonymous writer,
* that the Irishmen had four prophets in their time, Patrick, Marten [sic],
FIRST SCHOOLS OF CHRISTIAN IRELAND 211
the Boru tribute from King Finnachta about the year 693.
Glendalough was plundered and destroyed by the Danes five
times over, within a period of thirty years, yet it to some
extent recovered itself, and the great St. Laurence O'Toole,
who was Archbishop of Dublin at the coming of the Normans,
had been there educated.
Lismore, the great college of the south-east, was founded by
St. Carthach in the beginning of the seventh century, who left
behind him, according to O'Curry, a monastic rule of 580
lines of Irish verse.1 Cathal, or Cathaldus, born in the
beginning of the seventh century, who afterwards became
bishop and patron saint of Tarentum, in Italy, was a student,
and perhaps professor in this college. The office of St. Cathal-
dus states that Gauls, Angles, Irish, and Teutons, and very
many people of neighbouring nations came to hear his lectures
at Lismore, and Morini's life of him expresses in poetic terms
the tradition of Lismore's greatness.2 St. Cuanna, another
member of Lismore, was probably the author of the Book or
Brahen [i.e., Berchan], and Collumkill. Whosoever hath books in Irish
written every of them speak of the fight of this conquest, and saith that
long strife and oft fighting shall be for this land, and the land shall be
harried and stained with great slaughter of men, but the Englishmen fully
shall have the mastery a little before doomsday, and that land shall be
from sea to sea i-castled and fully won, but the Englishmen shall be after
that well feeble in the land and disdained ; so Barcan [Berchan] saith :
that through a king shall come out of the wild mountains of St. Patrick's,
that much people shall slew and afterwards break a castle in the wooden
of Affayle, with that the Englishmen of Ireland shall be destroyed by
that." The prophecy that the Englishmen fully shall have the mastery a
little before Doomsday is amusingly equivocal !
1 Described in O'Curry's MS. Materials, p. 375, but I do not know
where the original is.
2 Quoted in O'Halloran's " History of Ireland," bk. ix. chap. 4.
" Celeres vastissima Rheni / jam vadaTeutonici, jam deseruere Sicambri ; /
Mittit ab extremo gelidos Aquilone Boemos / Albis et Arvenni coeunt,
Batavi-que frequentes, / Et quicunque colunt alta sub rupe Gebennas. / . . .
Certatim hi properunt diverso tramite ad urbem / Lesmoriam [Lismore]
ijuvenis primos ubi transigit annos." Sec also corroborative proof of the
numbers of Gauls, Teutons, Swiss, and Italians visiting Lismore about the
year 700 in Ussher's " Antiquities," Works, vi., p. 303.
212 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
Cuanach, now lost, but often quoted in the Annals of
Ulster. He died in 650, and the book is not quoted after
the year 628, which makes it more than probable that he was
the author. Lismore was burnt down by the Danes, but
recovered itself in the general revival of native institutions that
took place prior to the conquest of the Anglo-Normans.
However, when these latter came upon the Irish stage it fared
ill with Lismore. Strongbow, indeed, was bought off from
burning its churches in 1173 by a great sum of money, but in
the following year his son, in spite of this, plundered the place.
Four years later the English forces again attacked it, plundered
it, and set it on fire. In 1207 the whole town and all about it
was finally consumed, so that at the present day not a vestige
remains behind of its schools, its cloisters, or its twenty
churches.
Cork college was founded by St. Finnbarr towards the
end of the sixth century. One of its professors, Colman
O'Cluasaigh, who died in 664, wrote the curious Irish hymn
or prayer mixed with Latin, preserved in the Book of
Hymns.1 The place was burned four times between 822 and
840, but in the twelfth century the ancient monastery which
had fallen into decay was rebuilt by Cormac Mac Carthy, king
1 Reprinted by Windisch in his " Irische Texte," Heft I., p. 5. The
first verse runs —
" Sen De don fe for don te
Mac maire ron feladar !
For a fhoessam dun anocht
Cia tiasam, cain temadar,"
which is in no wise easy to translate ! There are fifty-six verses not all in
the same metre. Another acknowledges St. Patrick as a patron saint, it
would run thus, in modernised orthography —
" Beannacht ar erlam [patrun] Padraig
Go naomhaib Eireann uime
Beannacht ar an gcathair-se
Agus ar chach bhfuil innti !
A three-quarter Latin verse runs thus —
" Regem regum rogamus/ in nostris sermonibus
Anacht Noe a luchtlach/ diluvi temporibus."
FIRST SCHOOLS OF CHRISTIAN IRELAND 213
of Munster, and builder of the celebrated Cormac's Chapel
at Cashel.
The school of Ross was founded by St. Fachtna for the
Ithian tribes1 of Corca Laidhi [Cor-ka-lee] in South-west
Munster. Ross is frequently referred to in the Annals up to
the tenth century. There is extant an interesting geo-
graphical poem in Irish, of 136 lines, written by one of the
teachers there in the tenth century, and apparently intended
as a kind of simple text to be learned by heart by the students.2
Ross was plundered by the Danes in 840, but appears to have
been flourishing until North-west Munster was laid waste by
the Anglo-Normans under FitzStephen, after which no more is
heard of its schools or colleges.
Innisfallen was founded upon an exquisite site on the lower
lake of Killarney by St. Finan.3 The well-known " Annals
of Innisfallen," preserved in the Bodleian Library, were
probably written by Maelsuthain [Calvus Perennis] O'Carroll,
the "soul-friend" of Brian Boru, who inserted the famous
entry in the Book of Armagh.4 It is probable that Brian
himself was also educated there. This monastery, owing to
its secure retreat in the Kerry mountains, appears to have
remained unplundered by the Norsemen, and to have been
accounted " a paradise and a secure sanctuary."
Iniscaltra is a beautiful island in the south-west angle of
Loch Derg, between Galway and Clare, still famous for its
splendid round tower. It was here Columba of Terryglass,
who died in 552, established a school and monastery which
became so famous that in the life of St. Senan seven ships are
mentioned as arriving at the mouth of the Shannon crowded with
students for Iniscaltra. It was this Columba who, when asked
by one of his disciples why the birds that frequented the island
'•ere not afraid of him, made the somewhat dramatic answer,
1 Sec p. 67. 2 See " Proceedings of R. I. Academy for 1884."
3 Whose name is preserved in O'Connell's residence, "Derrynane,"
which is really " Derry-finan " (Doire-Fhionain), •* See p. 140 and 141 not§
214 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
" Why should they fear me ? am I not a bird myself, for my
soul always flies to heaven as they fly through the sky."
Columba had a celebrated successor called Caimin, who died in
653. Ussher, who calls him St. Caminus, tells us that part of
his Psalter was extant in his own time, and that he had himself
seen it " having a collation of the Hebrew text placed on the
upper part of each page, and with brief scholia added on the
exterior margin." x
A great number of lesser monastic institutions and schools
seem to have existed alongside of these more famous ones, and
it is hardly too much to say that during the sixth, seventh,
eighth, and perhaps ninth centuries Ireland had caught and
held aloft the torch of learning in the lampadia of mankind,
and procured for herself the honourable title of the island of
saints and scholars.
1 " Habebatur psalterium, cujus unicum tantum quaternionem mihi
videre contigit, obelis et asteriscis diligentissime distinctum ; collatione
cum veritate Hebraica in superiore parte cujusque paginae posita, et
brevibus scholiis ad exteriorem marginem adjectis." (See " Works," vol.
vi. p. 544. Quoted by Professor G. Stokes, "Proceedings R. I. Academy,"
May, 1892.)
CHAPTER XVII
THEIR FAME AND TEACHING
IT is very difficult to say what was exactly the curriculum of
the early Irish colleges, and how far they were patronised by
laymen. Without doubt their original design was to pro- \
pagate a more perfect knowledge of the Scriptures and of \
theological learning in general, but it is equally certain that
they must have, almost from the very first, taught the heathen /
classics and the Irish language side by side with the Scriptures /
and theology. There is no other possible way of accounting
for the admirable scholarship of the men whom they turned
out, and for their skill in Latin and often also in Irish poetry. ^
Virgil, Ovid, Terence, and most of the Latin poets must have
been widely taught and read. " It is sufficient," says M.
d'Arbois de Jubainville, talking of Columbanus who was born
in 543, and who was educated at Bangor, on Belfast Loch,
" to glance at his writings, immediately to recognise his
marvellous superiority over Gregory of Tours and the Gallo-
Romans of his time. He lived in close converse with the
classical authors, as later on did the learned men of the sixteenth
century, whose equal he certainly is not, but of whom he
seems a sort of precursor." From the sixth to the sixteenth
century is a long leap, and no higher eulogium could be passed
215
2i 6 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
upon the scholarship of Columbanus and the training given by
his Irish college.1 All the studies of the time appear to have
been taught in them through the medium of the Irish language,
not merely theology but arithmetic, rhetoric, poetry, hagio-
graphy, natural science as then understood, grammar, chron-
ology, astronomy, Greek, and even Hebrew.
"The classic tradition," sums up M. Darmesteter, "to all appear-
ances dead in Europe, burst out into full flower in the Isle of Saints,
\ and the Renaissance began in Ireland 700 years before it was known
"* in Italy. During three centuries Ireland was the asylum of the
higher learning which took sanctuary there from the uncultured
states of Europe. At one time Armagh, the religious capital of
Christian Ireland, was the metropolis of civilisation."
1 Here are a few lines from the well-known Adonic poem which he, at
the age of 68, addressed to his friend Fedolius —
" Extitit ingens Impia quippe
Causa malorum Pygmalionis
Aurea pellis, Regis ob aurum
Corruit auri Gesta leguntur.
Munere parvo
Ccena Deorum.
Ac tribus illis Fcemina soepe
Maxima Us est Perdit ob aurum
Orta Deabus. Casta pudorem.
Hinc populavit Non Jovis aun
Trogugenarum Fluxit in inibre,
Ditia regna Sed quod adulter
Dorica pubes. Obtulit aurum
Juraque legum Aureus ille
Fasque fides que Fingitur imber."
Rumpitur aure.
Dr. Sigerson in " Bards of the Gael and Gaul," p. 407, prints as Jubain-
ville also does, the whole of this noted poem, and points out that it is shot
through and through with Irish assonance. " Not less important than its
assonance," writes Dr. Sigerson, " is the fact that it introduces into Latin
verse the use of returning words, or burthens with variations, which
supply the vital germs of the rondeau and the ballad." I am not myself
convinced of what Dr. Sigerson considers marks of intentional assonance
in almost every line.
His chief remaining works are a Monastic Rule in ten chapters ; a book
on the daily penances of the monks ; seventeen sermons ; a book on the
measure of penances ; a treatise on the eight principal vices ; five
epistles written to Gregory the Great and others ; and a good many Latin
verses. His life is written by the Abbot Jonas, a contemporary of
his own,
THEIR FAME AND TEACHING 217
" Ireland," says Babington in his " Fallacies of Race Theories," *
" had been admitted into Christendom and to some measure of
culture only in the fifth century. At that time Gaul and Italy
enjoyed to the full all the knowledge of the age. In the next
century the old culture-lands had to turn for some little light and
teaching to that remote and lately barbarous land."
When we remember that the darkness of the Middle Ages
had already set in over the struggles, agony, and confusion of
feudal Europe, and that all knowledge of Greek may be said
to have died out upon the Continent — " had elsewhere absolutely
vanished," says M. Darmesteter — when we remember that
even such a man as Gregory the Great was completely ignorant
of it, it will appear extraordinary to find it taught in Ireland
alone, out of all the countries of Western Europe.2 Yet this
is capable of complete and manifold proof. Columbanus for
instance, shows in his letter to Pope Boniface that he knows
something of both Greek and Hebrew.3 Aileran, who died of
the plague in 664, gives evidence of the same in his book on
our Lord's genealogy. Cummian's letter to the Abbot of
lona has been referred to before, and, as Professor G. Stokes puts
it, "proves the fact to demonstration that in the first half of
the seventh century there was a wide range of Greek learning,
not ecclesiastical merely, but chronological, astronomical, and
philosophical, away at Durrow in the very centre of the Bog
of Allen." Augustine, an un-identified Irish monk of the
second half of the seventh century, gives many proofs of Greek
and Oriental learning and quotes the Chronicles of Eusebius.
The later Sedulius, the versatile abbot of Kildare, about the
year 820 " makes parade of his Greek knowledge," to quote a
Jmch writer in the " Revue Celtique," " employs Greek words
P. 122.
" Grossere oder geringere Kenntniss klassischen Alterthums, vor allem
mtniss des Griechischen ist daher in jener Zeit ein Mazstab sowohl fur
Bildung einer einzelnen Personlichkeit als auch fur den Culturgrad eines
.zen Zeitalters " (Zimmer, " Preussische Jahrbucher," January, 1887).
He plays on his own name Columba, " 3 dove," and turns it into Greek
\ Hebrew, irepurrepct and j-jj-p
218 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
without necessity, and translates into Greek a part of the
definition of the pronoun." z St. Caimins's Psalter, seen by
Bishop Ussher with the Hebrew text collated, convinced Dr.
Reeves that Hebrew as well as Greek was studied in Ireland
about the year 600. Nor did this Greek learning tend to die
out. In the middle of the ninth century John Scotus
Erigena, summoned from Ireland to France by Charles the
Bald, was the only person to be found able to translate the
Greek works of the pseudo-Dionysius,2 thanks to the training
he had received in his Irish school. The Book of Armagh
contains the Lord's Prayer written in Greek letters, and there
is a Greek MS. of the Psalter, written in Sedulius' own hand,
now preserved in Paris. Many more Greek texts, at least a
dozen, written by Irish monks, are preserved elsewhere in
Europe. "These eighth and ninth century Greek MSS.,"
remarks Professor Stokes, " covered with Irish glosses and Irish
poems and Irish notes, have engaged the attention of palaeo-
graphers and students of the Greek texts of the New Testament
during the last two centuries." They are indeed a proof
that — as Dr. Reeves puts it — the Irish School " was unques-
tionably the most advanced of its day in sacred literature."
This remarkable knowledge of Greek was evidently derived
from an early and direct commerce with Gaul, where Greek
had been spoken for four or five centuries, first alongside of
Celtic, and in later times of Latin also.3 The knowledge
1 Dr. Sigerson prints an admirably graceful poem either by this or
another Sedulius of the ninth century at p. 411 of his "Bards of the Gael
and Gaul." It shows how far from being pedants the Irish monks were.
This poem is a dispute between the rose and lily.
2 This translation which Charles sent to the Pope threw Anastasius, the
Librarian of the Roman Church, into the deepest astonishment. " Mir-
andum est," he writes in his letter of reply, dated 865, " quomodo vir ille
barbarus in finibus mundi positus, talia intellectu capere in aliamque
linguam transferre valuerit" (Sec Prof. Stokes, " R. I. Academy Pro-
ceedings," May, 1892).
3 St. Jerome tells us that the people of Marseilles were in his day trilin-
gual, " Massiliam Phocsei condiderunt quos ait Varro trilingues esse, quod
et Graece loquantur, et Latine et Gallice " (Migne's edition, vol. vii. p. 425).
THEIR FAME AND TEACHING 219
of Hebrew may have been derived from the Egyptian monks
who passed over from Gaul into Ireland. Egypt and the East
were more or less in close communication with Gaul in the
fifth century, and the Irish Litany, ascribed to Angus the
Culdee, commemorates seven Egyptian monks amongst many
other Gauls, Germans, and Italians who resided in Ireland.
The close and constant intercommunication between Greek-
speaking Gaul and Ireland accounts for the planting and culti-
vation of the Greek language in the Irish schools, and once
planted there it continued to flourish more or less for some
centuries. There is ample evidence to prove the connection
between Gaul and Ireland from the fifth to the ninth century.
We find Gaulish merchants in the middle of Ireland at
Clonmacnois, who had no doubt sailed up the Shannon in the
way of commerce, selling wine to Ciaran in the sixth century.
We find Columbanus, a little later on, inquiring at Nantes for
a vessel engaged in the Irish trade — qua vexerat commercium cum
Hibernia. In Adamnan's Life of Columcille we find
mention of Gaulish sailors arriving at Cantire. Adamnan's
own treatise on Holy Places was written from the verbal
account of a Gaul. In the Old Irish poem on the Fair
of Carman in Wexford — a pagan institution which lived on
in Christian times — we find mention of the
" Great market of the foreign Greeks,
Where gold and noble clothes were wont to be ; " *
the foreign Greeks being no doubt the Greek-speaking
Gaulish merchants. Alcuin sends his gifts of money and oil
and his letters direct from Charlemagne's court to his friends
in Clonmacnois, probably by a vessel engaged in the direct
Irish trade, for, as he himself tells us, the sea-route between
England and France was then closed. If more proof of the
1 Sec appendix to O'Curry's " Manners and Customs," vol. iii. p. 547—
" Margaid mor na n-gall ngregach
I mbid or is ard etach."
220 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
close communication between Ireland and Gaul were wanted,
the fact that Dagobert II., king of France in the seventh
century, was educated at Slane,1 in Ireland, and also that
certain Merovingian and French coins have been found
here, should be sufficient.
The fame of these early Irish schools attracted students in
the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries from all quarters to
Ireland, which had now become a veritable land of schools
and scholars. The Venerable Bede tells us of the crowds
of Anglo-Saxons who flocked over into Ireland during the
plague, about the year 664, and says that they were all warmly
welcomed by the Irish, who took care that they should be
provided with food every day, without payment on their part ;
that they should have books to read, and that they should
receive gratuitous instruction from Irish masters.2 Books
must have already multiplied considerably when the swarms
of Anglo-Saxons could thus be supplied with them gratis.
This noble tradition of free education to strangers lasted down
to the establishment of the so-called " National " schools in
Ireland, for down to that time " poor scholars " were freely
supported by the people and helped in their studies. The num-
ber of scribes whose deaths have been considered worth
recording by the annalists is very great, and books consequently
must have been very numerous. This plentifulness of books
probably added to the renown of the Irish schools. An English
prince as well as a French one was educated by them in the
seventh century ; this was Aldfrid, king of Northumbria, who
1 He is said to have spent eighteen or twenty years there and to have
acquired all the wisdom of the Scots. The reason why he was sent to
Slane, as Dr. Healy well observes, was, not because it was the most cele-
brated school of the time, but because it was in Meath where the High-
kings mostly dwelt, and it was only natural to bring the boy to some place
near the Royal Court. (" Ireland's Schools and Scholars," p. 590.)
2 " Quos omnes Scotti libentissime suscipientes victum eis quotidianum
sine pretio, libros quoque ad legendum, et magisterium gratuitum, prae-
bere curabant " (" Ecc. Hist.," book iii. chap. 27). Amongst these were th$
celebrated Egbert, of whoni Bede tells us §o much, and St, Chad,
THEIR FAME AND TEACHING 221
was trained in all the learning of Erin, and who always aided
and abetted the Irish in England, in opposition to Wilfrid, who
opposed them. That the king got a good education in Ireland
may be conjectured from the fact that Aldhelm, abbot of
Malmesbury, dedicated to him a poetic epistle on Latin
metric and prosody, in which, says Dr. Healy, "he con-
gratulates the king on his good fortune in having been edu-
cated in Ireland." Aldhelm's own master was also an Irishman,
Mael-dubh, and his abbacy of Malmesbury is only a corruption
of this Irishman's name Maeldubh's-bury.1 In another place
Aldhelm tells us that while the great English school at Canter-
bury was by no means overcrowded, the English swarmed to
the Irish schools like bees. Aldfrid himself, when leaving
Ireland, composed a poem of sixty lines in the Irish language
and metre, which he must have learned from the bards, in
which he compliments each of the provinces severally, as
though he meant to thank the whole nation for their hos-
pitality.2
" I found in Inisfail the fair
In Ireland, while in exile there,
Women of worth, both grave and gay men,
Learned clerics, heroic laymen.
1 He is called Mailduf by Bede, and Malmesbury Maildufi urbem, which
shows that the aspirated " b " in dubh had twelve hundred years ago the
sound of " f " as it has to-day in Connacht.
2 O'Reilly states that the poem consisted of ninety-six lines, but Hardi-
man, in his " Irish Minstrelsy," vol. ii. p. 372, gives only sixty. Hardiman
has written on the margin of O'Reilly's " Irish Writers " in my possession,
" I have a copy, the character is ancient and very obscure." Aldfrid may
well have written such a poem, of which the copy printed by Hardiman
may be a somewhat modernised version. It begins —
" Ro dheat an inis finn Fail
In Eirinn re imarbhaidh,
lomad ban, ni baoth an breas,
lomad laoch, iomad cleireach."
It was admirably and fairly literally translated by Mangan for Montgomery.
His fourth line, however, runs, " Many clerics and many laymen," which
conveys no meaning save that of populousness. I have altered this line
to make it suit the Irish " many a hero, many a cleric."
222 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
" I travelled its fruitful provinces round,
And in every one of the five I found,
Alike in church and in palace hall,
Abundant apparel and food for all."
St. Willibrord, a Saxon noble educated in Ireland about
the same time with King Aldfrid, went out thence and
ultimately became Archbishop of Utrecht. Another noted
scholar of the same period was Agilbert, a Frank by birth,
who spent a long time in Ireland for the purpose of study and
afterwards became Bishop of Paris.1 We have seen how the
Office of St. Cathaldus states that the school of Lismore was
visited by Gauls, Angles, Scotti, Teutons, and scholars from
other neighbouring nations. The same was more or less the
case with Clonmacnois, Bangor, and some others of the most
noted of the Irish schools.
It was not in Greek attainments, nor in ecclesiastical studies,
nor in Latin verses alone, that the Irish excelled ; they also
produced astronomers like Dungal and geographers like
Dicuil. Dungal's attainments we have glanced at, but
Dicuil's book — de mensura orbis terrarum — written about the
year 825, is more interesting, although nothing is known about
the author's own life, nor do we know even the particular
Irish school to which he belonged.2 His book was published
by a Frenchman because he found Dicuil's descriptions of the
measurements of the Pyramids a thousand years ago tallied
with his own.
" Antioch," writes Professor G. Stokes, " about A.D. 600, was the
centre of Greek culture and Greek erudition, and the chronicle of
Malalas, as embodied in Niebuhr's series of Byzantine historians,
is a mine of information on many questions ; but compare it with
the Irish work of Dicuil and its mistakes are laughable."
1 " Natione quidem Gallus," says Bede, " sed tune legendarum gratia
scripturarum in Hibernia non parvo tempore demoratus."
2 Probably Clonmacnois. See Stokes, " Celtic Church," p. 214, and Dr.
Healy's " Ireland's Schools and Scholars," p. 283.
THEIR FAME AND TEACHING 223
A great deal of his work is founded of course upon Pliny,
Solinus, and Priscian, but he shows a highly-developed critical
sense in comparing and collating various MSS. which he had
inspected to ensure accuracy. What he tells us at first-hand,
however, is by far the most interesting. In speaking of the
Nile he says that : —
" Although we never read in any book that any branch of the Nile
flows into the Red Sea, yet Brother Fidelis told in my presence to
my master Suibhne [Sweeny] — to whom under God I owe whatever
knowledge I possess — that certain clerics and laymen from Ireland
who went to Jerusalem on pilgrimage sailed up the Nile a long way."
They sailed thence by a canal into the Red Sea, and this state-
ment proves the accuracy of Dicuil, for this canal really existed
and continued in use until 767, when it was closed to hinder
the people of Mecca and Medina getting supplies from Egypt.
The account of the Pyramids is particularly interesting.
"The aforesaid Brother Fidelis measured one of them and
found that the square face was 400 feet in length." The
same brother wished to examine the exact point where Moses
had entered the Red Sea in order to try if he could find any
traces of the chariots of Pharaoh or the wheel tracks, but the
sailors were in a hurry and would not allow him to go on this
excursion. The breadth of the sea appeared to him at this
point to be about six miles. Dicuil describes Iceland long
before it was discovered by the Danes.
" It is now thirty years," said he, writing in 825, " since I was told
by some Irish ecclesiastics, who had dwelt in that island from the
ist of February to the ist of August, that the sun scarcely sets
there in summer, but always leaves, even at midnight, light enough
to do one's ordinary business — vel pediculos de camisia abstrahere " !
Those writers are greatly mistaken, he says, who describe the
Icelandic sea as always frozen, and who say that there is day
there from spring to autumn and from autumn to spring, for
the Irish monks sailed thither through the open sea in a month
224 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
of great natural cold, and yet found alternate day and night,
except about the period of the summer solstice. He also
describes the Faroe Isles : —
" A certain trustworthy monk told me that he reached one of them
by sailing for two summer days and one night in a vessel with two
benches of rowers. ... In these islands for almost a hundred
years there dwelt hermits who sailed there from our own Ireland
[nostra Scottia], but now they are once more deserted as they were
at the beginning, on account of the ravages of the Norman pirates."
This is proof positive that the Irish discovered and inhabited
Iceland and the Faroe Islands half a century or a century
before the Northmen. Dicuil was distinguished as a gram-
marian, metrician, and astronomer,1 but his geographical treatise,
written in his old age, is the most interesting and valuable of
his achievements.
Fergil, or Virgilius, as he is usually called, was another great
Irish geometer, who eventually became Archbishop of Salzburg
and died in 785. He taught the sphericity of the earth and
the doctrine of the Antipodes, a truth which seems also to have
been familiar to Dicuil. St. Boniface, afterwards Archbishop
of Mentz, evidently distorting his doctrine, accused him to the
Pope of heresy in teaching that there was another world and
other men under the earth, and another sun and moon.
" Concerning this charge of false doctrine, if it shall be
established," said the Pope, " that Virgil- taught this per-
verse and wicked doctrine against God and his own soul,
do you then convoke a council, degrade him from the priest-
hood, and drive him from the Church." Virgil, however,
seems to have satisfactorily explained his position, for nothing
'was done against him.
These instances help to throw some light upon a most
difficult subject — the training given in the early Irish Christian
schools, and the cause of their undoubted popularity for three
centuries and more amongst the scholars of Western Europe.
* His astronomical work, written in 814-16, remains as yet unpublished.
CHAPTER XVIII
CONFLICTS WITH THE CIVIL POWER
THE extraordinary and abnormal receptivity of the Irish of
the fifth century, and the still more wonderful and unprece-
dented activity of their descendants in the sixth and following
ones had almost bid fair to turn the nation into a land of
apostles. This outburst of religious zeal, glorious and en-
during as it was, carried with it, like all sudden and powerful
movements, an element of danger. It was unfortunately
destined in its headlong course to overflow its legitimate
barriers and to come into rude contact with the civil power
which had been established upon lines more ancient and not
wholly sympathetic.
A striking passage in one of Renan's books dwells upon the
obvious religious inferiority of the Greeks and Romans to the
Jews, while it notes at the same time their immense political
and intellectual superiority over the Semitic nation. The
inferiority of the Jew in matters political and intellectual the
French writer seems inclined to attribute to his abnormally
developed religious sense, which, absorbed in itself, took all too
little heed of the civic side of life and of the necessities of the
state. Nor can it, I think, be denied that primitive Chris-
tianity in some cases took over from the Hebrews a certain
P 225
226 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
amount of this spirit of self-absorption and of disregard for the
civil side of life and social polity. "Quand on prend les choses
humaines par ce c6te," remarks Renan, " on fonde de grands
proselytismes universels, on a des apotres courant le monde
d'un bout a 1'autre, et le convertissant ; mais on ne fonde pas
des institutions politiques, une independance nationale, une
dynastic, un code, un peuple."
We have already seen how the exaggerated pretensions of
St. Columcille had come almost at once into opposition with
the established law of the land, the law which enjoined death
as the penalty for homicide at Tara, and how the priest
unjustifiably took upon himself to override the civil magistrate
in the person of the king.
Of precisely such a nature — only with far worse and far
more enduring consequences — was the cursing of Tara by St.
Ruadhan of Lothra. The great palace where, according to
general belief, a hundred and thirty-six pagan and six Christian
kings had ruled uninterruptedly, the most august spot in all
Ireland, where a " truce of God " had always reigned during
the great triennial assemblies, was now to be given up and
.deserted at the curse of a tonsured monk. The great
Assembly or F£is of Tara, which accustomed the people to
the idea of a centre of government and a ruling power,
could no more be convened, and a thousand associations and
memories which hallowed the office of the High-king were
vsnapped in a moment. It was a blow from which the
monarchy of Ireland never recovered, a blow which, by
putting an end to the great triennial or septennial conven-
tions of the whole Irish race, weakened the prestige of the
central ruler, increased the power of the provincial chieftains,
segregated the clans of Ireland from one another, and opened
a new road for faction and dissension throughout the entire
island.
There is a considerable amount of mystery attached to this
whole transaction, and all the great Irish annalists, the " Four
CONFLICTS WITH THE CIVIL POWER 229
" When King Diarmuid heard of the killing he sent his young men
and his executive to waste and to spoil Aedh Guaire. And he flees to
Bishop Senan, for one mother they had both, and Senan the bishop
goes with him to Ruadhan of Lothra, for it was two sisters of
Lothra that nursed Bishop Senan, Gael and Ruadhnait were their
names. But Aedh Guaire found no protection with Ruadhan, but
was banished away into Britain for a year, and Diarmuid's people
came to seek for him in Britain, so he was again sent back to
Ruadhan. And Diarmuid himself comes to Ruadhan to look for
him, but he had been put into a hole in the ground by Ruadhan,
which is to-day called 'Ruadhan's Hole.' Diarmuid sent his man
to look in Ruadhan's kitchen whether Aedh Guiare were there. But
on the man's going into the kitchen his eyes were at once struck
blind. When Diarmuid saw this, he went into the kitchen himself,
but he did not find Aedh Guiare there. And he asked Ruadhan
where he was, for he was sure he would tell him no lie.
" ' I know not where he is/ said Ruadhan, ' if he be not under
yon thatch.'
"After that Diarmuid departs to his house, but he remembered
the cleric's word and returns to the recluse's cell, and he sees the
candle being brought to the spot where Aedh Guaire was. And he
sends a confidential servant to bring him forth — Donnan Donn was
his name — and he dug down in the hiding place, but the arm he
stretched out to take Aedh withered to the shoulder. And he
makes obeisance to Ruadhan after that, and the two servants
remained with Ruadhan after that in Poll Ruadhain. After this
Diarmuid [himself] carries off Aedh Guaire to Tara."
Upon this, we are told, Ruadhan made his way to Brendan
of Birr, and thence to the so-called twelve apostles of Ireland,1
and they all followed the King and came to Tara, and they
fast upon the King that night, and he, " relying on his kingly
quality and on the justice of his cause, fasts upon them." 2
" In such fashion, and to the end of a year they continued before
Tara under Ruadhan's tent exposed to weather and to wet, and they
were every other night without food, Diarmuid and the clergy, fast-
ing on each other."
After this the story goes on that Brendan the Navigator had
in the meantime landed from his foreign expeditions, and
1 See above, p. 196.
* " A niurt a fhlatha ocus a fhirinne,"
228 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
story-teller, is never easily determined. The story runs as
follows : —
King Diarmuid's steward and spear-bearer had been ill and
wasting away for a year. On his recovery he goes to the
King, and asks him whether " the order of his discipline and
peace " had been observed during the time of his illness. The
King answered that he had noticed no breach or diminution
of it. The spear-bearer said he would make sure of the
King's peace by travelling round Ireland with his spear held
transversely, and he would see whether the door of every liss
and fortress would be opened wide enough to let the spear
pass — such on the approach of the King's spear seems to have
been the law — and "so shall the regimen and peace of
Ireland," said he " be ascertained."
" From Tara, therefore, goes forth the spear-bearer,1 and with
him the King of Ireland's herald, to proclaim Ireland's peace, and
he arrived in the province of Connacht, and made his way to the
mansion of Aedh [^E] Guaire of Kinelfechin. And he at that time
had round his rath a stockade of red oak, and had a new house too,
that was but just built [no doubt inside the rath] with a view to his
marriage feast. Now, a week before the spear-bearer's arrival the
other had heard that he was on his way to him, and had given orders
to make an opening before him in the palisade [but not in the
dwelling] .
" The spear-bearer came accordingly, and Aedh Guaire bade him
welcome. The spear-bearer said that the house must be hewn
[open to the right width] before him.
" ' Give thine own orders as to how it may please thee to have it
hewn/ said Aedh Guaire, but, even as he spake it, he gave a stroke
of his sword to the spear-bearer, so that he took his head from off
him.
" Now at this time the discipline of Ireland was such that who-
soever killed a man void of offence, neither cattle nor other valu-
able consideration might be taken in lieu of the slain, but the slayer
must be killed, unless it were that the King should order or permit
the acceptance of a cattle-price.
1 He is called Aedh Baclamh here, " Bacc Lonim " in the " Life." Bac-
lamh apparently indicates some office. I have here called him only the
spear-bearer.
CONFLICTS WITH THE CIVIL POWER 229
" When King Diarmuid heard of the killing he sent his young men
and his executive to waste and to spoil Aedh Guaire. And he flees to
Bishop Senan, for one mother they had both, and Senan the bishop
goes with him to Ruadhan of Lothra, for it was two sisters of
Lothra that nursed Bishop Senan, Cael and Ruadhnait were their
names. But Aedh Guaire found no protection with Ruadhan, but
was banished away into Britain for a year, and Diarmuid's people
came to seek for him in Britain, so he was again sent back to
Ruadhan. And Diarmuid himself comes to Ruadhan to look for
him, but he had been put into a hole in the ground by Ruadhan,
which is to-day called 'Ruadhan's Hole/ Diarmuid sent his man
to look in Ruadhan's kitchen whether Aedh Guiare were there. But
on the man's going into the kitchen his eyes were at once struck
blind. When Diarmuid saw this, he went into the kitchen himself,
but he did not find Aedh Guiare there. And he asked Ruadhan
where he was, for he was sure he would tell him no lie.
" ' I know not where he is,' said Ruadhan, ' if he be not under
yon thatch.'
"After that Diarmuid departs to his house, but he remembered
the cleric's word and returns to the recluse's cell, and he sees the
candle being brought to the spot where Aedh Guaire was. And he
sends a confidential servant to bring him forth — Donnan Donn was
his name — and he dug down in the hiding place, but the arm he
stretched out to take Aedh withered to the shoulder. And he
makes obeisance to Ruadhan after that, and the two servants
remained with Ruadhan after that in Poll Ruadhain. After this
Diarmuid [himself] carries off Aedh Guaire to Tara."
Upon this, we are told, Ruadhan made his way to Brendan
of Birr, and thence to the so-called twelve apostles of Ireland,1
and they all followed the King and came to Tara, and they
fast upon the King that night, and he, " relying on his kingly
quality and on the justice of his cause, fasts upon them." 2
" In such fashion, and to the end of a year they continued before
Tara under Ruadhan's tent exposed to weather and to wet, and they
were every other night without food, Diarmuid and the clergy, fast-
ing on each other."
After this the story goes on that Brendan the Navigator had
in the meantime landed from his foreign expeditions, and
1 See above, p. 196.
3 "A niurt a fhlatha ocus 3 fhfrinne."
230 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
hearing that the other saints of Ireland were fasting before
Tara, he also proceeds thither. But King Diarmuid, learning
of his coming, was terrified, and consented to give up Aedh
Guaire for "fifty horses, blue-eyed with golden bridles."
Brendan the Voyager, fresh from his triumphs on the ocean,
summons fifty seals and makes them look like horses, and
guaranteeing them for a year and a quarter, hands them over
to the King and receives Aedh Guaire. But when the time
guaranteed was out, they became seals again, and brought their
riders with them into the sea. And Diarmuid was very wroth
at the deception, " and shut the seven lisses of Tara to the end
that the clergy should not enter into Tara, lest they should
leave behind malevolence and evil bequests."
It appears that the clerics still continued fasting upon the
King, and he fasting upon them,
" And people were assigned [by the King] to wait upon them and
to keep watch and ward over them until the clergy should have accom-
plished the act of eating and consuming food in their presence. But
on this night Brendan gave them this advice — their cowls to be about
their heads and they to let their meat and ale pass by their mouths
into their bosoms and down to the ground, and this they did. Word
was brought to the King that the clergy were consuming meat and
ale, so Diarmuid ate meat that night, but the clerics on the other
hand fasted on him through stratagem.
" Now Diarmuid's wife — Mughain was his wife — saw a dream, which
dream was this, that upon the green of Tara was a vast and wide-
foliaged tree, and eleven slaves hewing at it, but every chip which
they knocked from it would return into its place again and adhere to
it [as before], till at last there came one man that dealt the tree but a
stroke, and with that single cut laid it low, as the poet spoke the lay —
" ' An evil dream did she behold
The wife of the King of Tara of the heavy torques,
Although it brought to her grief and woe
She could not keep from telling it.
A powerful stout tree did she behold,
That might shelter the birds of Ireland,
Upon the hill-side, smitten with axes,
And champions hewing together at it, etc.
(48 lines more.)
CONFLICTS WITH THE CIVIL POWER 231
As for Diarmuid, son of Cerbhall [the King] , after that dream he
arose early, so that he heard the clergy chant their psalms, and he
entered into the house in which they were.
" ' Alas ! ' he said, ' for the iniquitous contest which ye have waged
against me, seeing that it is Ireland's good that I pursue, and to pre-
serve her discipline and royal right, but 'tis Ireland's unpeace and
murderousness which ye endeavour after. For God Himself it is
who on such or such a one confers the orders of prince, of righteous
ruler, and of equitable judgment, to the end that he may maintain
his truthfulness, his princely quality, and his governance. Now that
to which a king is bound is to have mercy coupled with stringency
of law, and peace maintained in the sub-districts, and hostages in
fetters ; to succour the wretched, but to overwhelm enemies, and to
banish falsehood, for unless on this hither side one do the King of
Heaven's will, no excuse is accepted by him on the other. And thou,
Ruadhan,' said Diarmuid, 'through thee it is that injury and rending
of my mercy and of mine integrity to Godward is come about, and
I pray God that thy diocese be the first in Ireland that shall be
renounced, and thy Church lands the first that shall be impugned.'
" But Ruadhan said, ' Rather may thy dynasty come to nought, and
none that is son or grandson to thee establish himself in Tara for
ever ! '
" Diarmuid said, ' Be thy Church desolate continually.'
" Ruadhan said, ' Desolate be Tara for ever and for ever.
" Diarmuid said, ' May a limb of thy limbs be wanting to thee, and
come not with thee under ground, and mayest thou lack an eye !'
" ' Have thou before death an evil countenance in sight of all ; may
thine enemies prevail over thee mightily, and the thigh that thou
liftedst not before me to stand up, be the same mangled into pieces.'
" Said Diarmuid, ' The thing [i.e., the man] about which is our
dispute, take him with you, but in thy church, Ruadhan, may the
alarm cry sound at nones always, and even though all Ireland be
at peace be thy church's precinct a scene of war continuously.'
" And from that time to this the same is fulfilled." x
There follows a poem of 88 lines uttered by the King.
The same story in all its essential details is told in the MS.
1 There is a poem ascribed to Ruadhan in the MS. marked H. 4. in
Trinity College. O'Clery's Feilire na Naomh has a curious note on
Ruadhan which runs thus : Ruadhan of Lothra, " he was of the race of
Owen Mor, son of Oilioll Olum. A very old ancient book (sein leabhar ro
aosta) as we have mentioned at Brigit, ist of February, states that Ruadhan
of Lothra was in manners and life like Matthew the Apostle."
232 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
Egerton 1782, a vellum of the fifteenth century, which pro-
fesses to follow the lost Book of Sligo. It is quite as unbiassed
and outspoken about the result of the clerics' action as the
Book of Lismore. It makes Diarmuid address the clerics thus —
" ' Evil is that which ye have worked O clerics, my kingdom's ruina-
tion. For in the latter times Ireland shall not be better off than she
is at this present. But, however it fall out,' said he, ' may bad
chiefs, their heirs-apparent, and their men of war, quarter them-
selves in your churches, and may it be their [read your ?] own selves
that in your houses shall pull off such peoples' brogues for them, ye
being the while powerless to rid yourselves of them.' "
This codex sympathises so strongly with the king that it
states that one of Ruadhan's eyes burst in his head when the king
cursed him. Beg mac De, the celebrated Christian prophet, is
made to prophecy thus, when the king asks him in what fashion
his kingdom should be after his death,
"' An evil world,' said the prophet, 'is now at hand, in which men
shall be in bondage, woman free ; mast wanting ; woods smooth ;
blossom bad ; winds many ; wet summer ; green corn ; much cattle ;
scant milk ; dependants burdensome in every country, hogs lean,
chiefs wicked ; bad faith ; chronic killing ; a world withered, raths in
number.' "
King Diarmuid died in 558, according to the "Four
Masters ; " it is certain he never retreated a foot from Tara,
but it was probably his next successor who, intimidated at the
clerics' curser and the ringing of their bells — for they circled
Tara ringing their bells against it — deserted the royal hill
for ever.1
The palace of Cletty, not far from Tara, was also cursed by
St. Cairneach at the request of the queen of the celebrated
Muircheartach Mor mac Earca, and deserted in consequence.2
1 After this the High-kings of Ireland belonging to the northern Ui Neill
resided in their own ancient palace of Aileach near Derry, and the High-
kings of the southern Ui Neill families resided at the Rath near Castle-
pollard, or at Dun-na-sgiath (" the Fortress of the Shields ") on the brink of
Loch Ennell, near Mullingar. Brian Boru resided at Kincora in Clare,
? See O'Donovan's letter from Navan on Brugh na Boinne,
CONFLICTS WITH THE CIVIL POWER 233
Another, but probably more justifiable, instance of the clergy
fasting upon a lay ruler and cursing him, was that of the
notorious Raghallach (Reilly), king of Connacht, who made
his queen jealous by his infidelity, and committed other crimes.
The story is thus recorded by Keating —
" The scandal of that evil deed soon spread throughout all the land
and the saints of Ireland were sorrowful by reason thereof. St.
Fechin of Fobar [Fore is West Meath] came in person to Raghallach
to reprehend him, and many saints came in his company to aid him
in inducing the prince to discontinue his criminal amour. But
Raghallach despised their exhortations. Thereupon they fasted
against him, and as there were many other evil-minded persons
besides him in the land, they made an especial prayer to God that for
the sake of an example he should not live out the month of May,
then next to come on, and that he should fall by the hands of villains,
by vile instruments, and in a filthy place ; and all these things hap-
pened to him,"
as Keating goes on to relate, for he was killed by turf-cutters.
Sometimes the saints are found on opposite sides, as at
the Battle of Cooldrevna where Columcille prayed against
the High-king's arms, and Finian prayed for them ; or as in
the well-known case of the expulsion of poor old St.
Mochuda z and his monks in 631 from the monastery at
Rathain, where his piety and success had aroused the jealousy
of the clerics of the Ui Neill, who ejected him by force, despite
his malediction. It was then he returned to his own province
and founded Lismore, which soon became famous.2
Led away by our admiration of the magnificent outburst of
learning and the innumerable examples of undoubted devotion
displayed by Irishmen from the sixth to the ninth century, we
are very liable to overlook the actual state of society, and to
read into a still primitive social constitution the thoughts and
ideas of later ages, forgetting the real spirit of those early times.
We must remember that St. Patrick had made no change in
the social constitution of the people, and that the new religion
' Also called Carthachi 9 See above, p, 211,
234 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
in no way affected their external institutions, and as a natural
consequence even saints and clerics took the side of their own
I kings and people, and fought in battle with as much gusto as
any of the clansmen. Women fought side by side with men,
and were only exempted from military service in 590, through
the influence of Columcille at the synod of Druimceat — of
which synod more hereafter, and Adamnan had to get the law
renewed over a hundred years later, for it had become in-
operative. The monks were of course as liable as any other of
the tribesmen to perform military duty to their lords, and were
only exempted * from it in the year 804. The clergy fought
with Cormac mac Culenain as late as 908 at the battle where
he fell, and a great number of them were killed.2 The
clergy often quarrelled among themselves also. In 673 the
monks of Clonmacnois and Durrow fought one another, and
the men of Clonmacnois slew two hundred of their opponents.
In 816 four hundred men were slain in a fight between rival
monasteries. The clan system, in fact, applied down to the
eighth or ninth century almost as much to the clergy as to the
laity, and with the abandonment of Tara and the weakening
of the High-kingship, the only power which bid fair to over-
ride feud and faction was got rid of, and every man drank for
himself the intoxicating draught of irresponsibility, and each
princeling became a Caesar in his own community.
The saints with their long-accredited exercises of semi-
miraculous powers, formed an admirable ingredient wherewith
to spice a historic romance, such as the soul of the Irish story-
tellers loved, and they were not slow to avail themselves of it.
A passage in the celebrated history of the Boru tribute,
preserved in the twelfth-century Book of Leinster, turns both
Columcille and his biographer Adamnan to account in this
way, by introducing dialogues between them and their con-
1 By Fothadh called "na Canoine" who persuaded Aedh Oirnide to
release them from this duty.
2 See " Fragments of Irish Annals " by O'Donovan, p. 210, and his note
CONFLICTS WITH THE CIVIL POWER 235
temporary kings of Ireland, which are worth giving here, as
they preserve some primitive traits, but more especially as an
example of how the later mediaevalists conceived their own
early saints. Aedh [Ae], the High-king of Ireland, had asked
Columcille how many kings of all whom he himself had come
in contact with, or had cognisance of, would win, or had won,
to heaven ; and Columcille answered :
" ' Certainly I know of only three, Daimin King of Oriel, and Ailill
King of Connacht, and Feradach of Corkalee, King of Ossory.
"'And what good did they do/ said Aedh, 'beyond all other
kings ? '
" ' That's easy told,' said Columcille, ' as for Daimin no cleric ever
departed from him having met with a refusal, and he never reviled
a cleric, nor spoiled church nor sanctuary, and greatly did he bestow
upon the Lord. Afterwards he went to heaven, on account of his mild
dealing with the Lord's people ; and the clerics still chant his litany.
" ' As for Ailill, moreover, this is how he found the Lord's clemency ;
he fought the battle of Cul Conaire with the Clan Fiacrach, and they
defeated him in that battle, and he said to his charioteer, " Look
behind for us, and see whether the slaying is great, and are the
slayers near us ? "
" ' The charioteer looked behind him, and 'twas what he said :
" ' " The slaying with which your people are slain," said he, " is
unendurable."
" ' " It is not their own guilt that falls on them, but the guilt of my
pride and my untruthf ulness," said he ; " and turn the chariot for us
against [the enemy]," said he, " for if I be slain amidst them (?) it
will be the saving of a multitude.'
" ' Thereupon the chariot was turned round against the enemy, and
thereafter did Ailill earnestly repent, and fell by his enemies. So
that man got the Lord's clemency,' said Columcille.
"'As for Feradach,1 the King of Ossory, moreover, he was a
covetous man without a conscience, and if he were to hear that a
man in his territory had only one scruple of gold or silver, he would
take it to himself by force, and put it in the covers of goblets
and crannogues and swords and chessmen. Thereafter there came
upon him an unendurable sickness. They collect round him all
his treasures, so that he had them in his bed. His enemies came,
the Clan Connla, after that, to seize the house on him. His sons,
1 This story is also told in the " Three Fragments of Irish Annals," p. 9.
236 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
too, came to him to carry away the jewels with them [to save them
for him].
" ' " Do not take them away, my sons," said he, " for I harried many
for those treasures, and I desire to harry myself on this side the
tomb for them, and that my enemies may bring them away of my
good will, so that the Deity may not harry me on the other side."
" ' After that his sons departed from him, and he himself made
earnest repentance, and died at the hands of his enemies, and gains
the clemency of the Lord.'
"'Now as for me myself/ said Aedh, 'shall I gain the Lord's
clemency ? '
" ' Thou shalt not gain it on any account,' said Columcille.
'"Well, then, cleric,' said he, 'procure for me from the Deity that
the Leinster men [at least] may not overthrow me.'
" ' Well, now, that is difficult for me,' said Columcille, ' for my
mother was one of them, and the Leinstermen came to me to
Durrow,1 and made as though they would fast upon me, till I should
grant them a sister's son's request, and what they asked of me was
that no outside king should ever overthrow them ; and I promised
them that too, but here is my cowl for thee, and thou shalt not be
slain while it is about thee.' "
Less clement is Adamnan depicted in his interview, over a
century later, with King Finnachta, who had just been per-
suaded by St. Moiling 2 to remit the Boru tribute (then leviable
off Leinster), until luan^ by which the King unwarily under-
stood Monday, but the more acute saint Doomsday, the word
having both significations. Adamnan saw through the decep-
tion in a moment, and hastened to interrupt the plans of his
brother saint.
" He sought therefore," says the Book of Leinster, " the place
where [king] Finnachta was, and sent a clerk of his familia to summon
him to a conference. Finnachta, at the instant, busied himself with
a game of chess, and the cleric said, ' Come, speak with Adamnan.'
" ' I will not,' he answered, ' until this game be ended.'
"The ecclesiastic returned to Adamnan and retailed him this
answer. Then the saint said, ' Go and tell him that in the interval
1 See above, p. 170.
~ For Moiling, see above, p. 209-10. The following translation is by
Standish Hayes O'Grady, " Silva Gadelica," p, 422,
CONFLICTS WITH THE CIVIL POWER 237
I shall chant fifty psalms, in which fifty is a single psalm that will
deprive his children and grandchildren, and even any namesake of
his, for ever of the kingdom.' x
" Again the clerk accosted Finnachta and told him this, but until
his game was played the King never noticed him at all.
" ' Come, speak with Adamnan,' repeated the clerk, ' and '
"'I will not,' answered Finnachta, 'till this [fresh] game, too,
shall be finished/ all which the cleric rendered to Adamnan, who
said :
" ' A second time begone to him, tell him that I will sing other
fifty psalms, in which fifty is one that will confer on him shortness
of life.'
"This, too, the clerk, when he was come back, proclaimed to
Finnachta, but till the game was done, he never even perceived the
messenger, who for the third time reiterated his speech.
" ' Till this new game be played out I will not go,' said the King,
and the cleric carried it to Adamnan.
" ' Go to him,' the holy man said, ' tell him that in the meantime I
will sing fifty psalms, and among them is one that will deprive him
of attaining the Lord's peace.'
" This the clerk imparted to Finnachta, who, when he heard it,
with speed and energy put from him the chess-board, and hastened
to where Adamnan was.
" ' Finnachta,' quoth the saint, ' what is thy reason for coming
now, whereas at the first summons thou earnest not ? '
" ' Soon said,' replied Finnachta. ' As for that which first thou
didst threaten against me ; that of my children, or even of my
namesakes, not an individual ever should rule Ireland — I took it
easily. The other matter which thou heldest out to me — shortness
of life — that I esteemed but lightly, for Moiling had promised me
heaven. But the third thing which thou threatenedst me — to deprive
me of the Lord's peace — that I endured not to hear without coming
in obedience to thy voice.'
" Now the motive for which God wrought this was : that the gift
which Moiling had promised to the King for remission of the tribute
He suffered not Adamnan to dock him of."
It would be easy to multiply such scenes from the writings
of the ancient Irish. That they are not altogether eleventh
or twelfth-century inventions, but either the embodiment of a
1 For a description of the awful consequences of a saint's curse that
make a timid lunatic out of a valliant warrior see O'Donovan's frag-
mentary "Annals," p. 233.
238 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
vivid tradition, or else, in some cases, the working-tip of earlier
documents, now lost, is, I think, certain, but we possess no
criterion whereby we may winnow out the grains of truth
from the chaff of myth, invention, or perhaps in some cases
(where tribal honour is at stake) deliberate falsehood. The
only thing we can say with perfect certainty is that this is the
way in which the contemporaries of St. Lawrence O'Toole
pictured for themselves the contemporaries of St. Columcille
and St. Adamnan.
CHAPTER XIX
THE BARDIC SCHOOLS
WE must now, leaving verifiable history behind us, attempt a
cautious step backwards from the known into the doubtful,
and see what in the way of literature is said to have been
produced by the pagans. We know that side by side with
the colleges of the clergy there flourished, perhaps in a more \
informal way, the purely Irish schools of the Brehons and the 1
Bards. Unhappily however, while, thanks to the great >
number of the Lives of the Saints,1 we know much about
the Christian colleges, there is very little to be discovered about
the bardic institutions. These were almost certainly a con-\
tinuation of the schools of the druids, and represented some-
thing far more antique than even the very earliest schools of ;
the Christians, but unlike them they were not centred in a
fixed locality nor in a cluster of houses, but seem to have been
peripatetic. The bardic scholars grouped themselves not
round a locality but round a personality, and wherever it
pleased their master to wander — and that was pretty much all
1 O'Clery notices, in his Feilire na Naomh, the lives of thirty-one saints
written in Irish, all extant in his time, not to speak of Latin ones. I fancy
most of them still survive. Stokes printed nine from the Book of Lismore ;
Standish Hayes O'Grady four more from various sources.
240 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
round Ireland — there they followed, and the people seem to
have willingly supported them.
There seems to be some confusion as to the forms into
which what must have been originally the druidic school
disintegrated itself in the fifth and succeeding centuries, but
from it we can see emerging the poet, the Brehon, and the
historian, not all at once, but gradually. In the earliest period
the functions of all three were often, if not always, united in
one single person, and all poets were ipso facto judges as well.
We have a distinct account of the great occasion upon which
the poet lost his privilege of acting as a judge merely because
he was a poet. It appears that from the very earliest date the
learned classes, especially the " files," had evolved a dialect of
their own, which was perfectly dark and obscure to every one
except themselves. This was the Bearla Feni, in which so
much of the Brehon law and many poems are written, and
which continued to be used, to some extent, by poets down to
the very beginning of the eighteenth century. Owing to
their predilection for this dialect, the first blow, according to
Irish accounts, was struck at their judicial supremacy by the
hands of laymen, during the reign of Conor mac Nessa, some
time before the birth of Christ. This was the occasion when
the sages Fercertne and Neide" contended for the office of
arch-ollav of Erin, with its beautiful robe of feathers, the
Tugen.1 Their discourse, still extant in at least three MSS.
under the title of the " Dialogue of the Two Sages," 2 was so
learned, and they contended with one another in terms so
abstruse that, as the chronicler in the Book of Ballymote
puts it : —
" Obscure to every one seemed the speech which the poets uttered
in that discussion, and the legal decision which they delivered was
not clear to the kings and to the other poets.
" ' These men alone/ said the kings, ' have their judgment and
1 See Cormac's glossary sub voce.
8 See " Irische Texte," Dritte Serie, i Heft, pp. 187 and 204.
THE BARDIC SCHOOLS 241
their skill, and their knowledge. In the first place we do not
understand what they say.'
" ' Well, then,' said Conor, < every one shall have his share therein
from to-day for ever.' " l
This was the occasion upon which Conor made the law that
the office of poet should no longer carry with it, of necessity,
the office of judge, for, says the ancient writer, "poets alone
had judicature from the time that Amairgin Whiteknee
delivered the first judgment in Erin " until then.
That the Bardic schools, which we know flourished as public
institutions with scarcely a break from the Synod of Drumceat
in 590 (where regular lands were set apart for their endow- /
ment) down to the seventeenth century, were really a|
continuation of the Druidic schools, and embodied much that/
was purely pagan in their curricula, is, I think, amply shown
by the curious fragments of metrical text-books preserved in
the Books of Leinster and Ballymote, in a MS. in Trinity
College, and in a MS. in the Bodleian, all four of which have
been recently admirably edited by Thurneysen as a continuous
text.2 He has not however ventured upon a translation, for
the scholar would be indeed a bold one who in the present state
of Celtic scholarship would attempt a complete interpretation
of tracts so antique and difficult. That they date, partially at
least, from pre-Christian times seems to me certain from their
prescribing amongst other things for the poet's course in one
of his years of study a knowledge of the magical incantations
called Tenmlaida, Imbas forosnai^ and ^Dichetal do chennaib na
tuaithe, and making him in another year learn a certain poem
or incantation called Cetnad^ of which the text says that —
" It is used for finding out a theft. One sings it, that is to say,
through the right fist on the track of the stolen beast " [observe the
antique assumption that the only kind of wealth to be stolen is cattle]
1 Agallamh an da Suadh.
2 " Irische Texte," Dritte serie, Heft i.
3 See above, p. 84.
242 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
" or on the track of the thief, in case the beast is dead. And one sings
it three times on the one [track] or the other. If, however, one
does not find the track, one sings it through the right fist, and goes
to sleep upon it, and in one's sleep the man who has brought it
away is clearly shown and made known. Another virtue [of this
lay] : one speaks it into the right palm and rubs with it the quarters
of the horse before one mounts it, and the horse will not be over-
thrown, and the man will not be thrown off or wounded."
Another Cetnad to be learned by the poet, in which he
desires length of life, is addressed to " the seven daughters of
the sea, who shape the thread of the long-lived children."
Another with which he had to make himself familiar was the
Glam dichinnj- intended to satirise and punish the prince who
refused to a poet the reward of his poem. The poet —
" was to fast upon the lands of the king for whom the poem was to
be made, and the consent of thirty laymen, thirty bishops" — a
Christian touch to make the passage pass muster — " and thirty poets
should be had to compose the satire ; and it was a crime to them to
prevent it when the reward of the poem was withheld " — a pagan touch
as a make-weight on the other side ! " The poet then, in a company
of seven, that is, six others and himself, upon whom six poetic
degrees had been conferred, namely afocloc, macfuirmedh, doss, cana,
cliy anradh, and ollamh, went at the rising of the sun to a hill which
should be situated on the boundary of seven lands, and each of them
was to turn his face to a different land, and the ollamh 's (ollav's) face
was to be turned to the land of the king, who was to be satirised,
and their backs should be turned to a hawthorn which should be
growing upon the top of a hill, and the wind should be blowing from
the north, and each man was to hold a perforated stone and a thorn
of the hawthorn in his hand, and each man was to sing a verse of
this composition for the king — the ollamh or chief poet to take the
lead with his own verse, and the others in concert after him with
theirs ; and each then should place his stone and his thorn under
the stem of the hawthorn, and if it was they that were in the
wrong in the case, the ground of the hill would swallow them, and
if it was the king that was in the wrong, the ground would swallow
him and his wife, and his son and his steed, and his robes and his
hound. The satire of the macfuirmedh fell on the hound, the satire
1 See O'Curry's " Manners and Customs," vol. ii. p. 217, and " Irische
Texte," Dritte serie, Heft. i. pp. 96 and 125.
THE BARDIC SCHOOLS 243
of thefocloc on the robes, the satire of the doss on the arms, the
satire of the cana on the wife, the satire of the cli on the son, the
satire of the anrad on the steed,1 the satire of the ollam/i on the
king."
These instances that I have mentioned occurring in the.
books of the poets' instruction, are evidently remains of magic
incantations and terrifying magic ceremonies, taken over from
the schools and times of the druids, and carried on into the i
Christian era, for nobody, I imagine, could contend that they
had their origin after Ireland had been Christianised.2 And
the occurrence in the poets' text-books of such evidently pagan
passages, side by side with allusions to Athairne the poet — a
contemporary of Conor mac Nessa, a little before the birth of
Christ, Caoiltc, the Fenian poet of the third century, Cormac
his contemporary, Laldcend mac Bairchida about the year
400, and others — seems to me to be fresh proof for the real
objective existence of these characters. For if part of the
poets' text-books can be thus shown to have preserved things
taught in the pre-Christian times — to be in fact actually pre-
Christian — why should we doubt the reality of the pre-Christian
persons mixed up with them ?
The first poem written in Ireland by a Milesian is said to
be the curious rhapsody of Amergin, the brother of Eber, Ir,
and Erimon, who on landing broke out in a strain of
exultation : —
" I am the wind which breathes upon the sea,
I am the wave of the ocean,
I am the murmur of the billows,
\ I am the ox of the seven combats,
I am the vulture upon the rock,
I am a beam of the sun,
1 It is curious to thus make the steed rank apparently next to the king
himself, and above the wife and son, for the anrad who curses the steed
inks next to the ollamh.
2Thurneysen expresses some doubt about the antiquity of the last
:itation.
244 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
am the fairest of plants,
am a wild boar in valour,
am a salmon in the water,
am a lake in the plain,
am a word of science,
I am the point of the lance of battle,
I am the god who creates in the head [i.e., of man] the fire [i.e.,
the thought]
Who is it who throws light into the meeting on the mountain ?
Who announces the ages of the moon [if not I] ?
Who teaches the place where couches the sea [if not I] ? " x
There are two more poems attributed to Amergin of much
the same nature, very ancient and very strange. Irish
tradition has always represented these poems as the first made
by our ancestors in Ireland, and no doubt they do actually
represent the oldest surviving lines in the vernacular of any
country in Europe except Greece alone.
The other pre-Christian poets2 of whom we hear most, and
to whom certain surviving fragments are ascribed, are Feir-
ceirtne, surnamed file^ or the poet, who is usually credited with
the authorship of the well-known grammatical treatise called
Uraicept na n-fLigeas or " Primer of the Learned."s It was he
1 See Text I. paragraph 123 of Thurneysen's " Mittelirische Verslehren "
for three versions of this curious poem, printed side by side from the
Books of Leinster and Ballymote, and a MS. in the Bodleian. The old
Irish tract for the instruction of poets gives it as an example of what it
calls Cetal do chendaib. I have followed D'Arbois de Jubainville's inter-
pretation of it. He sees in it a pantheistic spirit, but Dr. Sigerson has
proved, I think quite conclusively, that it is liable to a different interpre-
tation, a panegyric upon the bard's own prowess, couched in enigmatic
metaphor. (See " Bards of the Gael and Gaul," p. 379.)
8 A number of names are mentioned — chiefly in connection with law
fragments — of kings and poets who lived centuries before the birth of
Christ, including an elegy by Lughaidh, son of Ith (from whom the Ithians
sprang), on his wife's death, Cimbaeth the founder of Emania, before
whose reign Tighearnach the Annalist considered omnia monumenta
Scotormn to be incerta, Roigne, the son of Hugony the Great, who lived
nearly three hundred years before Christ, and some others.
3 The " Uraicept " or " Uraiceacht " is sometimes ascribed to Forchern.
THE BARDIC SCHOOLS 245
who contended with Neide for the arch-poet's robe, causing King
Conor to decide that no poet should in future be also of necessity
a judge. The Uraicept begins with this preface or introduction:
" The Book of Feirceirtn£ here. Its place Emania ; its time
the time of Conor mac Nessa ; its person Feirceirtne the poet ;
its cause to bring ignorant people to knowledge." There is
also a poem attributed to him on the death of Curoi mac
Daire, the great southern chieftain, whom Cuchulain slew,
and the Book of Invasions contains a valuable poem ascribed to
him, recounting how Ollamh Fodla, a monarch who is said to
have flourished many centuries before, established a college of
professors at Tara.
There was a poet called Adhna, the father of that Neide
with whom Feirceirtne contended for the poet's robe,
who also lived at the court of Conor mac Nessa, and his
name is mentioned in connection with some fragments of
laws.
Athairne, the overbearing insolent satirist from the Hill
of Howth, who figures largely in Irish romance, was
contemporaneous with these, though I do not know that
any poem is attributed to him. But he and a poet
called Forchern, with Feirceirtne* and Neide, are said to
have compiled a code of laws, now embodied with others
under the title of Breithe Neimhidh in the Brehon I -aw
Books.
There was a poet Lughar at the Court of Oilioll and Meve
in Connacht about the same time, and a poem on the descen-
dants of Fergus mac Roigh [Roy] is ascribed to him, but as
he was contemporaneous with that warrior he could not have
written about his descendants.
It gives examples of the declensions of nouns and adjectives in Irish,
distinguishing feminine nouns from masculine, etc. It gives rules of
syntax, and exemplifies the declensions by quotations from ancient poets.
A critical edition of it from the surviving manuscripts that contain it in
whole or part is a desideratum.
246 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
There is a prose tract called Moran's Will,1 ascribed to
Moran, a well-known jurist who lived at the close of the first
century.
Several other authors, either of short poems or law frag-
ments, are mentioned in the second and third centuries, such
as Feradach king of Ireland, Modan, Ciothruadh the poet,
Fingin, Oilioll Olum himself, the great king of Munster, to
whom are traced so many of the southern families. Fithil, a
judge, and perhaps some others, none of whom need be
particularised.
At the end of the third century we come upon three or
four names of vast repute in Irish history, into whose mouths
a quantity of pieces are put, most of which are evidently of
later date. These are the great Cormac mac Art himself,
the most striking king that ever reigned in pagan Ireland, he
who built those palaces on Tara Hill whose ruins still remain ;
Finn mac Cumhail his son-in-law and captain ; Ossian, Finn's
son ; Fergus, Ossian 's brother ; and Caoilte [Cweeltya] mac
Ronain.
The poetry ascribed to Finn mac Cumhail, Ossian, and the
other Fenian singers we will not examine in this place, but
we must not pass by one of the most remarkable prose tracts
of ancient Ireland with which 1 am acquainted, the famous
treatise ascribed to King Cormac, and well known in Irish
literature as the " Teagasg riogh," or Instruction of a Prince,
which is written in a curious style, by way of question and
answer. Cairbre, Cormac's son, he who afterwards fell out
with and overthrew the Fenians, is supposed to be learning
kingly wisdom at his father's feet, and that experienced monarch
instructs him in the pagan morality of the time, and gives
him all kinds of information and advice. The piece, which is
heavily glossed in the Book of Ballymote, on account of the
antiquity of the language, is of some length, and is far too
interesting to pass by without quoting from it.
1 Udacht Morain, H. 2, 7, T. C., D.
THE BARDIC SCHOOLS 247
THE INSTRUCTION OF A PRINCE,
" ' O grandson of Con, O Cormac,' said Cairbre, ' what is good for
a king.'1
" ' That is plain,' said Cormac, ' it is good for him to have patience
and not to dispute, self-government without anger, affability without
haughtiness, diligent attention to history, strict observance of cove-
nants and agreements, strictness mitigated by mercy in the execution
of laws. ... It is good for him [to make] fertile land, to invite ships
to import jewels of price across sea, to purchase and bestow raiment,
[to keep] vigorous swordsmen for protecting his territories, [to make]
war outside his own territories, to attend the sick, to discipline his
soldiers ... let him enforce fear, let him perfect peace, [let him]
give much of metheglin and wine, let him pronounce just judgments
of light, let him speak all truth, for it is through the truth of a king
that God gives favourable seasons.'
" 'O grandson of Con, O Cormac/ said Cairbre, 'what is good for
the welfare of a country ? '
" ' That is plain; said Cormac, ' frequent convocations of sapient
and good men to investigate its affairs, to abolish each evil and
retain each wholesome institution, to attend to the precepts of the
ciders ; let every assembly be convened according to law, let the
law be in the hands of the nobles, let the chieftains be upright and
unwilling to oppress the poor,' " etc., etc.
A more interesting passage is the following : —
" ' O grandson of Con, O Cormac, what are the duties of a prince
at a banqueting-house ? '
" ' A Prince on Samhan's [now All Souls] Day, should light his
lamps, and welcome his guests with clapping of hands, procure
comfortable seats, the cupbearers should be respectable and active
in the distribution of meat and drink. Let there be moderation of
music, short stories, a welcoming countenance, a welcome for the
learned, pleasant conversations, and the like, these are the duties of
the prince, and the arrangement of the banqueting-house.' "
After this Cairbre puts an important question which was
asked often enough during the period of the Brehon law, and
1 In the original in the Book of Ballymote : "A ua Cuinn a Cormaic,
ol coirbre cia is deach [i.e., maith], do Ri. Nin ol cormac [i.e., Ni doiligh
liom sin]. As deach [i.e., maith], do eimh ainmne [i.e., foighde] gan deabha
[i.e., imreasoin] uallcadi fosdadh [i.e., foasdadh] gan fearg. Soagallamha
gan mordhacht," etc. The glosses in brackets are written above the words.
248 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
which for over a thousand years scarce ever received a different
answer. He asks, " For what qualifications is a king elected
over countries and tribes of people ? "
Cormac in his answer embodies the views of every clan in
Ireland in their practical choice of a leader.
" From the goodness of his shape and family, from his ex-
perience and wisdom, from his prudence and magnanimity, from
his eloquence and bravery in battle, and from the number of his
friends."
After this follows a long description of the qualifications of a
prince, and Cairbre having heard it puts this question : — " O
grandson of Con, what was thy deportment when a youth ; "
to which he receives the following striking answer :
" ' I was cheerful at the Banquet of the Midh-chuarta [Mee-cuarta,
"house of the circulation of mead3'], fierce in battle, but vigilant and
circumspect. I was kind to friends, a physician to the sick, merciful
towards the weak, stern towards the headstrong. Although possessed
of knowledge, I was inclined towards taciturnity.1 Although strong
I was not haughty. I mocked not the old although I was young. I
was not vain although I was valiant. When I spoke of a person in
his absence I praised, not defamed him, for it is by these customs
that we are known to be courteous and civilised (liaghalach).' "
There is an extremely beautiful answer given later on by
Cormac to the rather simple question of his son :
" ' O grandson of Con, what is good for me ? '
" ' If thou attend to my command,' answers Cormac, 'thou wilt not
1 Compare Henry IV.'s advice to his son, not to make himself too familiar
but rather to stand aloof from his companions.
" Had I so lavish of my presence been,
So common-hackneyed in the eyes of men,
So stale and cheap to vulgar company —
Opinion, that did help me to the crown,
Had still kept loyal to possession," etc.
As for Richard his predecessor —
" The skipping king, he ambled up and down
With shallow jesters and rash bavin wits,
Soon kindled, and soon burned ; carded his state ;
Mingled his royalty with capering fools, ' etc.
" Henry IV.," Part I., act iii., scene 2.
THE BARDIC SCHOOLS 249
mock the old although thou art young, nor the poor although thou
art well-clad, nor the lame although thou art agile, nor the blind
although thou art clear-sighted, nor the feeble although thou art
strong, nor the ignorant although thou art learned. Be not slothful,
nor passionate, nor penurious, nor idle, nor jealous, for he who is so
is an object of hatred to God as well as to man.' "
" ' O grandson of Con,' asks Cairbre, in another place, ' I would
fain know how I am to conduct myself among the wise and among
the foolish, among friends and among strangers, among the old and
among the young,' and to this question his father gives this notable
response.
" ' Be not too knowing nor too simple ; be not proud, be not inactive,
be not too humble nor yet haughty ; be not talkative but be not too
silent ; be not timid neither be severe. For if thou shouldest appear
too knowing thou wouldst be satirised and abused ; if too simple
thou wouldst be imposed upon ; if too proud thou wouldst be
shunned ; if too humble thy dignity would suffer ; if talkative thou
wouldst not be deemed learned ; if too severe thy character would
be defamed ; if too timid thy rights would be encroached upon.' "
To the curious question, " O grandson of Con, what are the
most lasting things in the world ? " the equally curious and to
me unintelligible answer is returned, " Grass, copper, and yew."
Of women, King Cormac, like so many monarchs from
Solomon down, has nothing good to say, perhaps his high
position did not help him to judge them impartially. At least,
to the question, " O grandson of Con, how shall I distinguish
the characters of women ? " the following bitter answer is
given :
" ' I know them, but I cannot describe them. Their counsel is
foolish, they are forgetful of love, most headstrong in their desires,
fond of folly, prone to enter rashly into engagements, given to
swearing, proud to be asked in marriage, tenacious of enmity, cheer-
less at the banquet, rejectors of reconciliation, prone to strife, of
much garrulity. Until evil be good, until hell be heaven, until the sun
hide his light, until the stars of heaven fall, women will remain as we
have stated. Woe to him, my son, who desires or serves a bad
woman, woe to every one who has got a bad wife ' " !
This Christian allusion to heaven and hell, and some others
of the same sort, show that despite a considerable pagan flavour-
250 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
ing the tract cannot be entirely the work of King Cormac,
though it may very well be the embodiment and extension of an
ancient pagan discourse, for, as we have seen, after Christianity
had succeeded in getting the upper hand over paganism, a kind
of tacit compromise was arrived at, by means of which the
bards and files and other representatives of the old pagan
learning, were allowed to continue to propagate their stories,
tales, poems, and genealogies, at the price of incorporating with
them a small share of Christian alloy, or, to use a different
simile, just as the vessels of some feudatory nations are compelled
to fly at the mast-head the flag of the suzerain power. But so
badly has the dovetailing of the Christian and the pagan parts
been managed in most of the older romances, that the pieces
come away quite separate in the hands of even the least skilled
analyser, and the pagan substratum stands forth entirely dis-
tinct from the Christian accretion.
i
CHAPTER XX
THE SUGGESTIVELY PAGAN ELEMENT IN IRISH LITERATURE
IT is this easy analysis of early Irish literature into its ante-
Christian and its post-Christian elements, which lends to it its
absorbing value and interest. For when all spurious accretions
have been stripped off, we find in the most ancient Irish poems
and sagas, a genuine picture of pagan life in Europe, such as
we look for in vain elsewhere.
" The Church," writes Windisch, " adopted towards pagan sagas,
the same position that it adopted towards pagan law. ... I see
no sufficient ground for doubting that really genuine pictures of
a pre-Christian culture are preserved to us in the individual sagas,
pictures which are of course in some places faded, and in others
painted over by a later hand." T
Again in his notes on the story of Deirdre, he remarks —
" The saga originated in pagan, and was propagated in Christian
times, and that too without its seeking fresh nutriment as a rule from ;
Christian elements. But we must ascribe it to the influence of
Christianity that what is specifically pagan in Irish saga is blurred
1 " Ich sehe daher keinen geniigenden Grund daran zu zweifeln dass
uns in den Einzelsagen wirklich echte Bilder einer vorchristtichen Cultur
erhalten sind, allerdings Bilder die an einigen Stellen verblasst, an andern
von spaterer Hand iibermalt sind " (" Irische Texte," I., p. 253).
251
252 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
•over and forced into the background. And yet there exist many
whose contents are plainly mythological. The Christian monks were
certainly not the first who reduced the ancient sagas to fixed form,
but later on they copied them faithfully, and propagated them after
Ireland had been converted to Christianity."
Zimmer too has come to the same conclusion.
" Nothing," he writes, " except a spurious criticism which takes
for original and primitive the most palpable nonsense of which
Middle-Irish writers from the twelfth to the sixteenth century are
guilty with regard to their own antiquity, which is in many respects
strange and foreign to them : nothing but such a criticism can, on
the other hand, make the attempt to doubt of the historical character
of the chief persons of the Saga cycles.1 For we believe that Meve,
Conor mac Nessa, Cuchulain, and Finn mac Cumhail, are exactly as
much historical personalities as Arminius, or Dietrich of Bern, or
Etzel, and their date is just as well determined as that of the above-
mentioned heroes and kings, who are glorified in song by the
Germans, even though, in the case of Irish heroes and kings, external
witnesses are wanting.' "
M. d'Arbois de Jubainville expresses himself in like terms.
" We have no reason," he writes, " to doubt of the reality of
the principal role in this [cycle of Cuchulain] ; "2 and of the
story of the Boru tribute which was imposed on Leinster about
a century later ; he writes, " Le recit a pour base des faits reels,
quoique certains details aient e"te cr£es par Imagination ; " and
again, u Irish epic story, barbarous though it is, is, like Irish
law, a monument of a civilisation far superior to that of the
most ancient Germans ; if the Roman idea ot the state was
wanting to that civilisation, and, if that defect in it was a
radical flaw, still there is an intellectual culture to be found
1 " Nur eine Afterkritik die den handgreiflichsten Unsinn durch den
mittelirische Schreiber des 12-16 Jahrh. sich am eigenem Altherthum
versiindigen das ihnen in mancher Hinsicht fremd ist fiir urfangliche
Weisheithalt, nun eine solche Kritik kann, umgekehrt den Versuch machen
an dem historischen Character der Hauptperson beider Sagenkreise zu
zweifeln," etc. ( " Kelt-Studien," Heft. II., p. 189).
3 " Introduction a 1'etude de la litterature celtique," p. 217,
PAGAN ELEMENT IN IRISH LITERA TURE 253
there, far more developed than amongst the primitive
Germans.' " *
" Ireland, in fact," writes M. Darmesteter in his " English Studies,"
well summing up the legitimate conclusions from the works of the
great Celtic scholars, " has the peculiar privilege of a history con-
tinuous from the earliest centuries of our era until the present day.
She has preserved in the infinite wealth of her literature a complete
and faithful picture of the ancient civilisation of the Celts. Irish
literature is therefore the key which opens the Celtic world."
But the Celtic world means a large portion of Europe, and
the key to unlock the door of its past history is in the Irish
manuscripts of saga and poenic Without them the student
would have to view the past history of Europe through the dis-
torting glasses of the Greeks and Romans, to whom all outer
nations were barbarians, into whose social life they had no
motive for inquiring. He would have no other means of
estimating what were the feelings, modes of life, manners, and
habits, of those great races who possessed so large a part of the
ancient world, Gaul, Belgium, North Italy, parts of Germany,
Spain, Switzerland, and the British Isles ; who burned Rome,
plundered Greece, and colonised Asia Minor. But in the
Irish romances and historical sagas, he sees come to light
another standard by which to measure. Through this early
Irish peep-hole he gets a clear look at the life and manners
of the race in one of its strongholds, from which he may
conjecture and even assume a good deal with regard to
the others.
That the pictures of social life and early society drawn in
the Irish romances represent phases not common to the
Irish alone, but to large portions of that Celtic race which
once owned so much of Europe, may be surmised with some
certainty from the way in which characteristics of the Celts
barely mentioned by Greek and Roman writers re-appear
amongst the Irish in all the intimate detail and fond expansion
1 Preface to " L'Epopee Celtique en Irlande."
254 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
of romance. M. d'Arbois de Jubainville has drawn attention
to many such instances.
Posidonius, who was a friend of Cicero, and wrote about a
hundred years before Christ, mentions a custom which existed
in Gaul in his time of fighting at a feast for the best bit which
was to be given to the most valiant warrior. This custom,
briefly noticed by Posidonius, might be passed by unnoticed by
the ordinary reader, but the Irish one will remember the early
romances of his race in which the curadh-mir or " heroes bit "
so largely figures. He will remember that it is upon this
custom that one of the greatest sagas of the Cuchulain cycle,
the feast of Bricriu, hinges. Bricriu, the Thersites of the
Red Branch, having built a new and magnificent house,
determines to invite King Conor and the other chieftains to
a feast, for the house was very magnificent.
" The dining hall was built like that of the High-king at Tara.
From the hearth to the wall were nine beds, and each of the side
walls was thirty-five feet high and covered with ornaments of gilt
bronze. Against one of the side walls of that palace was reared a
royal bed destined for Conor,1 king of Ulster, which looked down
upon all the others. It was ornamented with carbuncles and pre-
cious stones and other gems of great price. The gold and silver and
all sorts of jewellery which covered that bed shone with such splen-
dour that the night was as brilliant as the day."
He had prepared a magnificent curadh-mir for the feast,
consisting of a seven-year old pig, and a seven-year old cow
that had been fed on milk and corn and the finest food since their
birth, a hundred cakes of corn cooked with honey — and every
1 This name is written Concobar in the ancient texts, and Conchiibhair in
the modern language, pronounced Cun-hoo-ar or Cun-hoor, whence the
Anglicised form Conor. The " b " was in early times pronounced, but there
are traces of its being dropped as early as the twelfth century, though with
that orthographical conservatism which so distinguishes the Irish lan-
guage, it has been preserved down to the present day. Zimmer says he
found it spelt Conchor in the twelfth-century book the Liber Landavensis.
From this the form Crochor (" cr " for " en " as is usual in Connacht) fol-
lowed, and the name is now pronounced either Cun-a-char or Cruch-oor.
PAGAN ELEMENT IN IRISH LITERATURE 255
four cakes took a sack of corn to make them — and a vat of
wine large enough to hold three of the warriors of the
Ultonians. This magnificent " heroes' bit " he secretly pro-
mises to each of three warriors in turn, Laeghaire [Leary],
Conall Cearnach, and Cuchulain, hoping to excite a quarrel
among them. On the result of his expedient the saga
turns. I
Again, Caesar tells us that when he invaded the Gauls they
did not fight any longer in chariots, but it is recorded that they
did so fight two hundred years before his time, even as the Persians
fought against the Greeks, and as the Greeks themselves must
have fought in a still earlier age commemorated by Homer. But
in the Irish sagas we find this epic mode of warfare in full force.
Every great man has his charioteer, they fight from their cars
as in Homeric days, and much is told us of both steed, chariot
and driver. In the above-mentioned saga of Bricriu's feast it
is the charioteers of the three warriors who claim the heroes'
bit for their masters, since they are apparently ashamed to make
the first move themselves. The charioteer was more than a
mere servant. Cuchulain sometimes calls his charioteer friend
or master (popa), and on the occasion of his fight with Ferdiad
desires him in case he (Cuchulain) should show signs of
yielding, to " excite reproach and speak evil to me so that the
ire of my rage and anger should grow the more on me, but if
he give ground before me thou shalt laud me and praise me and
speak good words to me that my courage may be the greater,"
and this command his friend and charioteer punctually
executes.
The chariot itself is in many places graphically de-
1 The reminiscence of the hero-bit appears to have lingered on in folk
memory. A correspondent, Mr. Terence Kelly, from near Omagh, in the
county Tyrone, tells me that he often heard a story told by an old
shanachie and herb-doctor in that neighbourhood who spoke a half-Scotch
dialect of English, in which the hero-bit figured, but it had fallen in
magnificence, and was represented as bannocks and butter with some
minor delicacies.
256 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
scribed. Here is how its approach is pourtrayed in the
Tain-
" It was not long," says the chronicler, " until Ferdiad's charioteer
heard the noise approaching, the clamour and the rattle, and the
whistling, and the tramp, and the thunder, and the clatter and the
roar, namely the shield-noise of the light shields, and the hissing of
the spears, and the loud clangour of the swords, and the tinkling of
the helmet, and the ringing of the armour, and the friction of the
arms ; the dangling of the missive weapons, the straining of the
ropes, and the loud clattering of the wheels, and the creaking of the
chariot, and the trampling of the horses, and the triumphant advance
of the champion and the warrior towards the ford approaching him."
In the romance called the " Intoxication of the Ultonians,"
it is mentioned that they drave so fast in the wake of Cuchu-
lain, that " the iron wheels of the chariots cut the roots of the
immense trees." Here is how the romancist describes the
advance of such a body upon Tara-Luachra.
" Not long were they there, the two watchers and the two druids,
until a full fierce rush of the first band broke hither past the glen.
Such was the fury with which they advanced that there was not left
a spear on a rack, nor a shield on a spike, nor a sword in an armoury
in Tara-Luachra that did not fall down. From every house on which
was thatch in Tara-Luachra it fell in immense flakes. One would
think that it was the sea that had come over the walls and over the
corners of the world upon them. The forms of countenances were
changed, and there was chattering of teeth in Tara-Luachra within.
The two druids fell in fits and in faintings and in paroxysms, one of
them out over the wall and the other over the wall inside."
On another occasion the approach of Cuchulain's chariot is
thus described —
"Like a mering were the two dykes which the iron wheels of
Cuchulain's chariot made on that day of the sides of the road. Like
flocks of dark birds pouring over a vast plain were the blocks and
round sods and turves of the earth which the horses would cast away
behind them against the ... of the wind. Like a flock of swans
pouring over a vast plain was the foam which they flung before them
over the muzzles of their bridles. Like the smoke from a roval
PAGAN ELEMENT IN IRISH LITERA TURE 257
hostel was the dust and breath of the dense vapour, because of the
vehemence of the driving which Liag, son of Riangabhra, on that
day gave to the two steeds of Cuchulain." x
Elsewhere the chariot itself is described as " wythe-wickered,
two bright bronze wheels, a white pole of bright silver with a
veining of white bronze, a very high creaking body, having its
firm sloping sides ornamented with cred (tin ? ), a back-arched
rich golden yoke, two rich yellow-peaked alls, hardened sword-
straight axle-spindles." Laeghaire's chariot is described in
another piece as " a chariot wythe-wickered, two firm black
wheels, two pliant beautiful reins, hardened sword-straight
axle-spindles, a new fresh-polished body, a back-arched rich
silver-mounted yoke, two rich-yellow peaked alls ... a bird
plume of the usual feathers over the body of the chariot." 2
Descriptions like these are constantly occurring in the Irish
tales, and enable us to realise better the heroic period of warfare
and to fill up in our imagination many a long-regretted lacuna
in our knowledge of primitive Europe.
" Those philosophers," says Diodorus Siculus, a Greek writer of
the Augustan age, speaking of the Druids, "like the lyric poets
called bards, have a great authority both in affairs of peace and war,
friends and enemies listen to them. Also when the two armies are
in presence of one another and swords drawn and spears couched,
they throw themselves into the midst of the combatants and appease
them as though they were charming wild beasts. Thus even
amongst the most savage barbarians anger submits to the rule of
wisdom, and the god of war pays homage to the Muses."
To show that the manners and customs of the Keltoi or Celts
of whom Diodorus speaks were in this respect identical with
those of their Irish cousins (or brothers), and to give another
instance of the warm light shed by Irish literature upon the
early customs of Western Europe I shall convert the abstract
1 See "Revue Celtique," vol. xiv. p. 417, translated by Whitley Stokes.
8 Leabhar na h-Uidhre, p. 122, col. 2, translated by Sullivan,
" Manners and Customs," vol. i. p. cccclxxviii,
R
258 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
into the concrete by a page or two from an Irish romance, not
an old one,1 but one which no doubt preserves many original
traditionary traits. In this story Finn mac Cumhail or Cool 2
at a great feast in his fort at Allen asks Goll about some tribute
which he claimed, and is dissatisfied at the answer of Goll, who
may be called the Ajax of the Fenians. After that there arose
a quarrel at the feast, the rise of which is thus graphically
pourtrayed —
" ' Goll,' said Finn, ' you have acknowledged in that speech that
you came from the city of Beirbhe to the battle of Cnoca, and that
you slew my father there, and it is a bold and disobedient thing of
you to tell me that/ said Finn.
" ' By my hand, O Finn,' said Goll, ' if you were to dishonour me
as your father did, I would give you the same payment that I gave
Cool.'
" ' Goll,' said Finn, ' I would be well able not to let that word pass
with you, for I have a hundred valiant warriors in my following for
every one that is in yours.'
" ' Your father had that also,' said Goll, ' and yet I avenged my
dishonour on him, and I would do the same to you if you were to
deserve it of me.'
" White-skinned Carroll O Baoisgne3 spake, and 't is what he said :
' O Goll,' said he, ' there is many a man,' said he, ' to silence you and
your people in the household of Finn mac Cumhail.'
" Bald cursing Conan mac Morna spake, and 't is what he said, ' I
swear by my arms of valour/ said he, ' that Goll, the day he has least
men, has a man and a hundred in his household, and not a man of
them but would silence you.'
" ' Are you one of those, perverse, bald-headed Conan ? ' said
Carroll.
" ' I am one of them, black-visaged, nail-torn, skin-scratched, little-
strength Carroll/ says Conan, ' and I would soon prove it to you that
Cumhail was in the wrong.'
1 In Irish Fionn mac Cumhail, pronounced " Finn (or Fewn in Mun-
ster), mac Coo-wil " or " Cool."
2 I translated this from manuscript in my possession made by one
Patrick O'Pronty (an ancestor, I think, of Charlotte Bronte) in 1763. Mr.
Standish Hayes O'Grady has since published a somewhat different text of it.
3 Pronounced " Bweesg-na," the triphthong aoi is always pronounced
like ee in Irish.
PAGAN ELEMENT IN IRISH LITERATURE 259
" It was then that Carroll arose, and he struck a daring fist, quick
and ready, upon Conan, and there was no submission in Conan's
answer, for he struck the second fist on Carroll in the middle of his
face and his teeth."
Upon this the chronicler relates how first one joined in and
then another, until at last all the adherents of Goll and Finn
and even the captains themselves are hard at work. u After
that," he adds, " bad was the place for a mild, smooth-fingered
woman or a weak or infirm person, or an aged, long-lived
elder." This terrific fight continued "from the beginning of
the night till the rising of the sun in the morning," and was
only stopped — just as Diodorus says battles were stopped — by
the intervention of the bards.
"It was then," says the romancist, " that the prophesying poet of
the pointed words, that guerdon-full good man of song, Fergus
Finnbheoil, rose up, and all the Fenians' men of science along with
him, and they sang their hymns and good poems, and their perfect
lays to those heroes to silence and to soften them. It was then they
ceased from their slaughtering and maiming, on hearing the music
of the poets, and they let their weapons fall to earth, and the poets
took up their weapons and they went between them, and grasped
them with the grasp of reconciliation."
When the palace was cleared out it was found that 1,100 of
Finn's people had been killed between men and women, and
eleven men and fifty women of GolPs party.
Caesar speaks of the numbers who frequented the schools of
the druids in Gaul ; " it is said," he adds, " that they learn
there a great number of verses, and that is why some of those
pupils spend twenty years in learning. It is not, according to
the druids, permissible to entrust verses to writing although
they use the Greek alphabet in all other affairs public and
private." Of this prohibition to commit their verses to paper,
we have no trace, so far as I know, in our literature, but the
accounts of the early bardic schools entirely bear out the
description here given of them by Caesar, and again shows the
solidarity of custom which seems to have existed between the
260 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
various Celtic tribes. According to our early manuscripts it
took from nine to twelve years for a student to take the
highest degree at the bardic schools, and in many cases where
the pupil failed to master sufficiently the subjects of the year,
he had probably to spend two over it, so that it is quite possible
that some might spend twenty years over their learning. And
much of this learning was, as Caesar notes, in verse. Many
earlier law tracts appear to have been so, and even many of the
earliest romances. There is a very interesting account extant
called the " Proceedings of the Great Bardic Association,"
which leads up to the Epic of the Tain Bo Chuailgne, the
greatest of the Irish romances, according to which this great
tale was at one time lost, and the great Bardic Institution was
commanded to hunt for and recover it. The fact of it being
said that the perfect tale was lost for ever " and that only a
fragmentary and broken form of it would go down to posterity "
perhaps indicates, as has been pointed out by Sullivan, " that
the filling up the gaps in the poem by prose narrative is
meant." In point of fact the tale, as we have it now, consists
half of verse and half of prose. Nor is this peculiar to the
Tain. Most of the oldest and many of the modern tales are
composed in this way. In most cases the verse is of a more
archaic character and more difficult than the prose. In very
many an expanded prose narrative of several pages is followed
by a more condensed poem saying the same thing. So much
did the Irish at last come to look upon it as a matter of course
that every romance should be interspersed with poetry, that
even writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
who consciously invented their stories as a modern novelist
invents his, have interspersed their pieces with passages, in
verse, as did Comyn in his Turlough mac Stairn, as did the
author of the Son of Ill-counsel, the author of the Parliament of
.Clan Lopus, the author of the Women's Parliament, and others.
/We may take it, then, that in the earliest days the romances
» were composed in verse and learned by heart by the students
PAGAN ELEMENT IN IRISH LITER A TURE 261
— possibly before any alphabet was known at all ; afterwards >
when lacunas occurred through defective memory on the part
of the reciter he filled up the gaps with prose. Those who
committed to paper our earliest tales wrote down as much of
the old poetry as they could recollect or had access to, and
wrote the connecting narrative in prose. Hence it soon came
to pass that if a story pretended to any antiquity it had to be
interspersed with verses, and at last it happened that the Irish
taste became so confirmed to this style of writing that authors
adopted it, as I have said, even in the seventeenth and eigh-
teenth centuries.
In spite of the mythological and phantastic elements which
are undoubtedly mingled with the oldest sagas,
"the manners and customs in which the men of the time lived
and moved, are depicted," writes Windisch,1 " with a naive realism
which leaves no room for doubt as to the former actuality of the
scenes depicted. In matter of costume and weapons, eating and
drinking, building and arrangement of the banqueting-hall, manners
observed at the feast, and much more, we find here the most valuable
information." " I insist upon it," he says in another place, " that
Irish saga is the only richly-flowing source of unbroken Celtism."
All the remaining linguistic monuments of Breton, Cornish,
and Welsh, " would form," writes M. d'Arbois de Jubainville,
" un ensemble bien incomplet et bien obscur sans la lumiere que
la litterature irlandaise projette sur ces debris. C'est le vieil irlandais
qui forme le trait d'union pour ainsi dire entre les dialectes neo-
celtiques de la fin du moyen age ou des temps modernes, et le
Gaulois des inscriptions lapidaires, des monnaies, des noms propres
conserves par la litterature grecque et la litterature romaine.'' a
It may, then, be finally acknowledged that those of the great /
nations of to-day, whose ancestors were mostly Celts, but/
whose language, literature, and traditions have completely dis-
appeared, must, if they wish to study their own past, turn
1 " Irische Texte," I., p. 252.
2 " Etudes grammaticales sur les langues Celtiques," 1881, p. vii.
262 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
themselves first to Ireland. When we find so much of the
brief and scanty information given us by the classics, not only
borne out, but amply illustrated by old Irish literature, when
we find the dry bones of Posidonius and Caesar rise up again
before us with a ruddy covering of flesh and blood, it is not
too much to surmise that in other matters also the various
Celtic races bore to each other a close resemblance.
Much more could be said upon this subject, as that the four
Gallo-Roman inscriptions to Brigantia found in Great Britain
are really to the Goddess Brigit;1 that the Brennus who
burned Rome 390 years before Christ and the Brennus who
stormed Delphi no years later were only the god Brian,
under whose tutelage the Gauls marched ; and that Lugu-
dunum, Lugh's Dun or fortress, is so-called from the god
Lugh the Long-handed, to whom two Celtic inscriptions are
found, one in Spain and one in Switzerland, as may be seen
set forth at length in the volumes of Monsieur d'Arbois de
Jubainville.
1 See above pp. 53 and 161.
CHAPTER XXI
THE OLDEST BOOKS AND POEMS
THE books of saga, poetry, and annals that have come down to
our day, though so vastly more ancient and numerous than
anything that the rest of Western Europe has to show, are
yet an almost inappreciable fragment of the literature that at
one time existed in Ireland. The great native scholar O'Curry,
who possessed a unique and unrivalled knowledge of Irish
literature in all its forms, has drawn up a list of lost books
which may be supposed to have contained our earliest litera-
ture.
We find the poet Senchan Torpeist — according to the
account in the Book of Leinster, a manuscript which dates
from about the year 1150 — complaining that the only per-
fect record of the great Irish epic, the Tain Bo Chuailgne T or
Cattle-spoil of Cooley, had been taken to the East with the
Cuilmenn,2 or Great Skin Book. Now Zimmer, who made
a special and minute study of this story, considers that the!
earliest redaction of the Tain dates from the seventh century.'
1 Pronounced "Taun Bo Hoo-il-n'ya." The "a" in Tain is pronounced
nearly like the " a " in the English word " Tarn."
2 Cuilmenn — it has been remarked, I think, by Kuno Meyer — seems
cognate with Colmmene, glossed nervus, and Welsh cwlm, "a knot or
tie." It is found glossed lebar—i^ leabhar, or " book."
264 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
This legend about Senchan — a real historical poet whose
eulogy in praise of Columcille, whether genuine or not,
was widely popular — is probably equally old, and points to
the early existence of a great skin book in which pagan
tales were written, but which was then lost. The next
great book is the celebrated Saltair of Tara, which is alluded
to in a genuine poem of Cuan O'Lochain about the year
1000, in which he says that Cormac mac Art drew up the
Saltair of Tara. Cormac, being a pagan, could not have
called the book a Saltair or Psalterium, but it may have got the
name in later times from its being in metre. All that this
really proves, however, is that there then existed a book about
the prerogatives of Tara and the provincial kings so old that
Cuan O'Lochain — no doubt following tradition — was not
afraid to ascribe it to Cormac mac Art who lived in the third
century. The next lost book is called the Book of the
Uacongbhail, upon which both the O'Clerys in their Book
of Invasions and Keating in his history drew, and which,
according to O'Curry, still existed at Kildare so late as 1626.
The next book is called the Cin of Drom Snechta. It is
quoted in the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, or " Book of the Dun
Cow" — a MS. of about the year noo — and often in the Book
of Ballymote and by Keating, who in quoting it says, " And
it was before the coming of Patrick to Ireland that that book
existed," * and the Book of Leinster ascribes it to the son
of a king of Connacht who died either in 379 or 499. The
next books of which we find mention were said to have
belonged to St. Longarad, a contemporary of St. Columcille.
The scribe who wrote the glosses on the Fe"ilire of Angus the
Culdee, said that the books existed still in his day, but that
nobody could read them ; for which he accounts by the tale
that Columcille once paid Longarad a visit in order to see his
books, but that his host refused to show them, and that Colum-
cille then said, " May your books be of no use after you, since
1 For the authorship of this book see above, p. 71.
THE OLDEST BOOKS AND POEMS 265
you have exercised inhospitality about them." On account of
this the books became illegible after Longarad's death. Angus
the Culdee lived about the year 800, but Stokes ascribes the
Feilire to the tenth century ; a view, however, which Mr.
Strachan's studies on the Irish deponent verb, which is of such
frequent occurrence in the Feilire, may perhaps modify. At
what time the scholiast wrote his note on the text is uncertain,
but it also is very old. It is plain, then, that at this time a
number of illegible books — illegible no doubt from age — existed ;
and to account for this illegibility the story of Columcille's
curse was invented. The Annals of Ulster quote another
book at the year 527 under the name of the Book of St.
Mochta, who was a disciple of St. Patrick. They also quote
the Book of Guana at the year 468 and repeatedly afterwards
down to the year 610, while they record the death of Cuana,
a scribe, at the year 738, after which no more quotations from
Guana's book occur.
The following volumes, almost all of which existed prior to
the year noo, are also alluded to in our old literature : — The
Book of Dubhdaleithe ; the Yellow Book of Slane ; the original
Leabhar na h-Uidhre, or " Book of the Dun Cow " ; the Books
of Eochaidh O'Flanagain ; a certain volume known as the
book eaten by the poor people in the desert ; the Book of Inis
an Duin ; the short Book of Monasterboice ; the Books of
Flann of Monasterboice ; the Book of Flann of Dungiven ;
the Book of Downpatrick ; the Book of Derry ; the Book of
Sabhal Patrick ; the Black Book of St. Molaga ; the Yellow
Book of St. Moiling ; the Yellow Book of Mac Murrough ;
the Book of Armagh (not the one now so called) ; the Red
Book of Mac Egan ; the Long Book of Leithlin ; the Books
of O'Scoba of Clonmacnois ; the " Duil " of Drom Ceat ; the
Book of Clonsost ; the Book of Cluain Eidhneach (the ivy
meadow) in Leix ; and one of the most valuable and often
quoted of all, Cormac's great Saltair of Cashel, compiled by
Cormac mac Culinan, who was at once king of Munster
266 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
and archbishop of Cashel,1 and who fell in battle in 903,
according to the chronology of the "Four Masters." The
above are certainly only a few of the books in which a large
early literature was contained, one that has now perished
almost to a page. Michael O'Clery, in the Preface to his
Book of Invasions written in 1631, mentions the books
from which he and his four antiquarian friends compiled their
work — mostly now perished ! — and adds : —
" The histories and synchronisms of Erin were written and tested
in the presence of those illustrious saints, as is manifest in the great
books that are named after the saints themselves and from their
great churches ; for there was not an illustrious church in Erin that
had not a great book of history named from it or from the saints who
sanctified it. It would be easy, too, to know from the books which
the saints wrote, and the songs of praise which they composed in
Irish that they themselves and their churches were the centres of
the true knowledge, and the archives and homes of the manuscripts
of the authors of Erin in the elder times. But, alas ! short was the
time until dispersion and decay overtook the churches of the saints,
1 " At what time this book was lost," says O'Curry, " we have no precise
knowledge, but that it existed, though in a dilapidated state, in the year
1454 is evident from the fact that there is in the Bodleian Library at
Oxford (Laud 610) a copy of such portions of it as could be deciphered at
that time, made by Shawn O'Clery for Mac Richard Butler. From the
contents of this copy and from the frequent references to the original for
history and genealogies found in the Books of Ballymote, Lecan, and
others, it must have been an historical and genealogical compilation of
large size and great diversity."
A legible copy of the Saltair appears, however, to have existed at
a much later date. I discovered a curious poem in an uncatalogued MS.
in the Royal Irish Academy by one David Condon, written apparently at
some time between the Cromwellian and Williamite wars, in which he
says —
" Saltair Chaisill is dearbh gur leigheas-sa
Leabhar ghleanna-da-locha gan go ba leir dam,
Leabhar Buidhe Mhuigleann (?) obair aosta," &c.
I.e., " Surely I have read the Saltair of Cashel, and the Book of Glendaloch
was certainly plain to me, and the Yellow Book of Mulling (?) (see above,
p. 210), an ancient work, the Book of Molaga, and the lessons of Cionn-
faola, and many more (books) along with them which are not (now) found
in Ireland."
THE OLDEST BOOKS AND POEMS 267
their relics, and their books ; for there is not to be found of them
now [1631] but a small remnant that has not been carried away into
distant countries and foreign nations — carried away so that their
fate is unknown from that time unto this."
As far as actual existing documents go, we have no speci-
mens of Irish MSS. written in Irish before the eighth century.
The chief remains of the old language that we have are mostly
found on the Continent, whither the Irish carried their books
in great numbers, and unfortunately they are not books of
saga, but chiefly, with the exception of a few poems, glosses
and explanations of books used evidently in the Irish ecclesias-
tical schools.1 A list of the most remarkable is worth giving
here, as it will help to show the extraordinary geographical
diversity of the Irish settlements upon the Continent, and the
keenness with which their relics have been studied by European
scholars — French, German, and Italian. The most important
are the glosses found in the Irish MSS. of Milan, published
by Ascoli, Zeuss, Stokes, and Nigra ; those in St. Gall — a
monastery in Switzerland founded by St. Gall, an Irish friend
of Columbanus, in the sixth century — published by Ascoli and
Nigra ; those in Wurtzburg, published by Zimmer and Zeuss ;
those in Carlsruhe, published by Zeuss ; those in Turin,
published by Zimmer, Nigra, and Stokes in his " Goidelica " ;
those in Vienna, published by Zimmer in his " Glossae Hibernicae "
and Stokes in his " Goidelica " ; those in Berne, those in Leyden,
those in Nancy, and the glosses on the Cambrai Sermon,
published by Zeuss.2 Next in antiquity to these are the Irish
parts of the Book of Armagh, the poems in the MSS. of St.
1 Such, for example, is the fragment of a commentary on the Psalter
published by Kuno Meyer in " Hibernica Minora," from Rawlinson, B. 512.
The original is assigned by him, judging from its grammatical forms, to
about the year 750. It is very ample and diffuse, and tells about the
Shophetim, or Sophtim, as the writer calls it, the Didne Haggamim, etc.,
and is an excellent example of the kind of Irish commentaries used by the
early ecclesiastics.
2 " Gram. Celt.," p. 1004-7.
268 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
Gall and Milan,1 and some of the pieces published by Windisch
in his " Irische Texte." Next to this is probably the
Martyrology of Angus the Culdee. And then come the
great Middle-Irish books — the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, the Book
of Leinster, and the rest.
From a palaeographic point of view the oldest books in
Ireland are probably the " Domhnach Airgid," a copy of the
Four Gospels in a triple shrine of yew, silver-plated copper,
and gold-plated silver, which St. Patrick was believed to have
given to St. Carthainn when he told that saint with a shrewd
wisdom, which in later days aroused the admiration of Mr.
Matthew Arnold, to build himself a church " that should not
be too near to himself for familiarity nor too far from himself
for intercourse." It probably dates from the fifth or sixth
century. The Cathach supposed to have been surreptitiously
written by Columcille from Finnian's book2 — a Latin copy of
the Gospels in Trinity College, Dublin ; the Book of Durrow,
a beautiful illuminated copy of the same ; the Book of Dim-
ma, containing the Four Gospels, ritual, and prayers, probably
a work of the seventh century ; the Book of Moiling, ot
probably about the same date ; the Gospels of Mac Regol,
the largest of the Old Irish Gospel books, highly but not
elegantly coloured, with an interlinear Anglo-Saxon version
in a late hand carried through its pages ; the Book of Kells,
the unapproachable glory of Irish illumination, and some other
ecclesiastical books. After them come the Leabhar na
h-Uidre and the great books of poems and saga.
Although the language of these sagas and poems is not that
of the glosses, but what is called " Middle-Irish," still it does
not in the least follow that the poems and sagas belong to the
Middle-Irish period. "The old Middle- Irish manuscripts,"
says Zimmer, " contain for the most part only Old Irish texts
re- written." 3 " Unfortunately," says Windisch, " every new
1 Published by Zeuss in his " Gramrnatica Celtica."
3 See above, p. 175. 3 " Keltische Studien," Heft i. p. 88.
THE OLDEST BOOKS AND POEMS 269
copyist has given to the text more or less of the linguistic garb
of his own day, so that as far as the language of Irish texts goes,
it depends principally upon the age of the manuscript that con-
tains them." * And again, in his preface to Adamnan's vision, he
writes : " Since we know that Irish texts were rewritten by
every fresh copyist more or less regularly in the speech of his
own day, the real age or a prose text cannot possibly be
determined by the linguistic forms of its language." 2 It is
much easier to tell the age of poetry than prose, for the
gradual modification of language, altering of words, shortening
of inflexions, and so on, must interfere with the metre, so that
when we find a poem in a twelfth-century manuscript written
in Middle Irish and in a perfect metrical form, we may — no
matter to what age it is ascribed — be pretty sure that it cannot
be more than two or three centuries older than the manuscript
that contains it. Yet even of the poems Dr. Atkinson
writes : "The poem may be of the eighth century, but the
forms are in the main of the twelfth." 3 Where poems that
really are of ancient date have had their language modified
in transcription so as to render them intelligible, the metre is
bound to suffer, and this lends us a criterion whereby to gauge
the age of verse, which is lacking to us when we come to deal
with prose.
This modification of language is not uncommon in literature
and takes place naturally, but I doubt if there ever was a
literature in which it played the same important part as in
Irish. Thus let us take the story of the Tain Bo Chuailgne,
of which I shall have more to say later on. Zimmer, after
long and careful study of the text as preserved to us in a manu-
script of about the year noo, came to the conclusion from the
marks of Old Irish inflexion, and so forth, which still remain in
the eleventh-century text, that there had been two recensions of
Preface to Loinges Mac n-Usnig, " Irische Texte," i. 61.
2 " Irische Texte," i. p. 167.
3 Preface to the list of contents of the facsimile Book of Leinster.
270 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
the story, a pre-Danish, that is, say, a seventh-century one,
and a post-Danish, that is a tenth- or eleventh-century one.
Thus the epic may have been originally committed to paper in
the seventh century, modified in the tenth, transcribed into
the manuscripts in which we have it in the eleventh and twelfth,
and propagated from that down to the eighteenth century, in
copies every one of which underwent more or less alteration
in order to render it more intelligible ; and it was in fact in
an eighteenth-century manuscript, yet one that differed, as I
subsequently discovered, in few essentials from the copy in the
Book of Leinster that I first read it. As the bards lived to
please so they had to please to live. The popular mind only
receives with pleasure and transmits with readiness popular
poetry upon the condition that it is intelligible,1 and hence
granting that Finn mac Cool was a real historical personage, it
is perfectly possible that some of his poetry was handed down
from generation to generation amongst the conservative Gael,
and slightly altered or modified from time to time to make it
more intelligible, according as words died out and inflexions be-
came obsolete. The Oriental philologist, Max Miiller, in
attempting to explain how myths arose (according to his theory)
from a disease of language, thinks that during the transition
period of which he speaks, there would be many words "under-
stood perhaps by the grandfather, familiar to the father, but
strange to the son, and misunderstood by the grandson." This
is exactly what is taking place over half Ireland at this very
moment, and it is what has always been at work amongst a
people whose language and literature go back with certainty for
nearly 1,500 years. Accordingly before the art of writing
became common, ere yet expensive vellum MSS. and a highly-
1 With the exception of the ancient Irish prayers like Mairinn Phadraig,
preserved by tradition, which are for the most part not intelligible to the
reciters, but which owe their preservation to the promise usually tacked on
at the end that the reciters shall receive some miraculous or heavenly
blessing. See my " Religious Songs of Connacht."
THE OLDEST BOOKS AND POEMS 271
paid class of historians and schools of scribes to a certain extent
stereotyped what they set down, it is altogether probable that
people who trusted to the ear and to memory, modified and
corrupted but still handed down, at least some famous poems,
like those ascribed to Amergin or Finn mac Cool. That the
Celtic memory for things unwritten is long I have often
proved. I have heard from peasants stanzas composed by
Donogha Mor O'Daly, of Boyle, in the thirteenth cen-
tury ; I have recovered from an illiterate peasant, in 1890 in
Roscommon, verses which had been jotted down in phonetic
spelling in Argyleshire by Macgregor, Dean of Lismore, in
the year 1512, and which may have been sung for hundreds
of years before it struck the fancy of the Highland divine to
commit them to paper ; * and I have again heard verses in
which the measure and sense were preserved, but found on
comparing them with MSS. that several obsolete words had
been altered to others that rhymed with them and were
intelligible. 2 For these reasons I should, in many cases,
refuse absolutely to reject the authenticity of a poem
simply because the language is more modern than that ot
the bard could have been to whom it is ascribed, and it
seems to me equally uncritical either to accept or reject
much of our earliest poetry, except what is in highly-
developed metre, as a good deal of it may possibly be the
actual (but linguistically modified) work of the supposed
authors.
This modifying process is something akin to but very
different in degree from Pope's rewriting of Donne's satires
or Dryden's version of Chaucer, inasmuch as it was probably
both unconscious and unintentional. To understand better
how this modification may have taken place, let us examine a
1 See my note on the Story of Oscar au fleau, in " Revue Celtique,"
vol. xiii. p. 425.
2 Cf. my note on Bran's colour, at p. 277 of my "Beside the
Fire."
272 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
few lines of the thirteenth-century English poem, the " Brut"
of Layamon : —
" And swa ich habbe al niht
Of mine swevene swithe ithoht,
For ich what to iwisse
Agan is al my blisse."
These lines were, no doubt, intelligible to an ordinary English-
man at the time. Gradually they become a little modernised,
thus : —
" And so I have all night
Of min-e sweeven swith ythought,
For I wat to ywiss
Agone is all my bliss."
Had these verses been preserved in folk-memory they must
have undergone a still further modification as soon as the words
sweeven (dream), swith (much), and ywiss (certainty) began
to grow obsolete, and we should have the verse modified and
mangled, perhaps something in this way : —
" And so I have all the night
Of my dream greatly thought,
For I wot and I wis
That gone is all my bliss."
The words "I wot and I wis," in the third line, represent
just about as much archaism as the popular memory and taste
will stand without rebelling. Some modification in the direc-
tion here hinted at may be found in, I should think, more than
half the manuscripts in the Royal Irish Academy to-day, and
just in the same sense as the lines,
" For I wot and I wis
That gone is my bliss,"
are Layamon's ; so we may suppose,
" Dubthach missi mac do Lugaid
Laidech lantrait
THE OLDEST BOOKS AND POEMS 273
Me rue inmbreith etir Loegaire
Ocus Patraic," *
to be the fifth century O'Lugair's, or
" Leathaid folt fada fraich,
Forbrid canach fann firm," *
to be Finn mac CumhaiPs.
Of the many poems — as distinguished from sagas, which are
a mixture of poetry and prose — said to have been produced
from pagan times down to the eighth century, none can be
properly called epics or even epopees. There are few continued
efforts, and the majority of the pieces though interesting for
a great many reasons to students, would hardly interest an
English reader when translated. Unfortunately, such a great
amount of our early literature being lost, we can only judge of
what it was like through the shorter pieces which have been
preserved, and even these short pieces read rather jejune and
barren in English, partly because of the great condensation of
the original, a condensation which was largely brought about
by the necessity of versification in difficult metres. In order
to see beauty in the most ancient Irish verse it is absolutely
necessary to read it in the original so as to perceive and appreciate
the alliteration and other tours de force which appear in every
line. These verses, for instance, which Meve, daughter or
Conan, is said to have pronounced over Cuchorb, her hus-
1 In more modern Irish : —
" Dubhthach mise, mac do Lughaidh
Laoi-each lan-traith
Me rug an bhreith idir Laoghaire
Agus Padraig."
I.e., " I am Dubhthach, son of Lewy the lay-full, full-wise. It is I who
delivered judgment between Leary and Patrick." Traith is the only obso-
lete word here.
2 In modern Irish, " Leathnuighidh folt fada fraoch," i.e., " Leathnuighidh
fraoch folt fada, foirbridh (fasaidh) canach (ceannabhan) fann fionn," i.e.,
" Spreads heath its long hair, flourishes the feeble, fair cotton-grass."
s
274 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
band, in the first century, appear bald enough in a literal
translation : —
" Moghcorb's son whom fame conceals [covers]
Well sheds he blood by his spears,
A stone over his grave — 'tis a pity —
Who carried battle over Cliu Mail.
My noble king, he spoke not falsehood,
His success was certain in every danger,
As black as a raven was his brow,
As sharp was his spear as a razor," etc.
One might read this kind of thing for ever in a translation
without being struck by anything more than some occasional
curiosa fellcitas of phrase or picturesque expression, and one
would never suspect that the original was so polished and com-
plicated as it really is. Here are these two verses done into
the exact versification of the original, in which interlinear
vowel-rhymes, alliterations, and all the other requirements of
the Irish are preserved and marked : —
" Mochorb's son of Fiercest FAME,
KNown his NAME for bloody toil,
To his Gory Grave is GONE,
He who SHONE o'er Snouting Moyle.
Kindly King, who Liked not LIES,
Rash to RISE to Fields of Fame,
Raven-Black his Brows of FEAR,
Razor-Sharp his SPEAR of flame," etc.1
This specimen of Irish metre may help to place much of oui
poetry in another light, for its beauty depends less upon the
intrinsic substance of the thought than the external elegance
1 Here is the first verse of this in the original. The Old Irish is nearly
unintelligible to a modern. I have here modernised the spelling : —
" Mac Mogachoirb Cheileas CLU
Cun fearas CRU thar a ghaibh
Ail uas a Ligi — budh LIACH —
Baslaide CHLIATH thar Cliu Mail."
The rhyming words do not make perfect rhyme as in English, but pretty
nearly so — clu cm, liath cliath, gdibh mail.
THE OLDEST. BOOKS AND POEMS 275
of the framework. We must understand this in order to do
justice to our versified literature, for the student must not
imagine that he will find long-sustained epics or interesting
narrative poems after the manner of the Iliad or Odyssey,
or even the Nibelungenlied, or the " Song of Roland ;" none
such now exist : if they did exist they are lost. The early poems
consist rather of eulogies, elegies, historical pieces, and lyrics,
few of them of any great length, and still fewer capable of
interesting an English reader in a translation. Occasionally we
meet with touches of nature poetry of which the Gael has
always been supremely fond. Here is a tentative translation
made by O'Donovan of a part of the first poem which Finn
mac Cumhail is said to have composed after his eating of
the salmon of knowledge : —
"May-Day, delightful time! How beautiful the colour; the
blackbirds sing their full lay ; would that Laighaig were here ! The
cuckoos sing in constant strains. How welcome is ever the noble
brilliance of the seasons ! On the margin of the branching woods
the summer swallows skim the stream. The swift horses seek the
pool. The heath spreads out its long hair, the weak, fair bog-down
grows. Sudden consternation attacks the signs, the planets, in their
courses running, exert an influence ; the sea is lulled to rest, flowers
cover the earth."
The language of this poem is so old as to be in parts unin-
telligible, and the broken metre points to the difficulties of
transmission over a long period of time, yet he would be a bold
man who would ascribe with certainty the authorship of it to
Finn mac Cumhail in the third century, or the elegy on Cuchorb
to Meve, daughter of Conan, a contemporary of Virgil and
Horace. And yet all the history of these people is known
and recorded with much apparent plausibility and many
collateral circumstances connecting them with the men of
their time. How much of this is genuine historical tradition ?
How much is later invention ? It is difficult to decide at
present.
CHAPTER XXII
EARLY SAGA AND ROMANCE
DURING the golden period of the Greek and Roman genius
no one ever wrote a romance. Epics they left behind
them, and history, but the romance, the Danish saga, the
Irish sgeul or ursgeul was unknown. It was in time of
decadence that a body of Greek prose romance appeared,
and with the exception of Petronius' semi-prose "Satyri-
con," and Apuleius' " Golden Ass," the Latin language pro-
duced in this line little of a higher character than such works
as the Gesta Romanorum. In Greece and Italy where the
genial climate favoured all kinds of open-air representations,
the great development of the drama took the place of novelistic
literature, as it did for a long time amongst the English after
the Elizabethan revival. In Ireland, on the other hand, the
dramatic stage was never reached at all, but the development
of the ursgeul, romance, or novel, was quite abnormally great.
I have seen it more than once asserted, if I mistake not, that
the dramatic is an inevitable and an early development in the
history of every literature, but this is to generalise from insuf-
ficient instances. The Irish literature which kept on develop-
ing— to some extent at least — for over a thousand years, and of
which hundreds of volumes still exist, never evolved a drama, nor
so much, as far as I know, as even a miracle play, although
these are found in Welsh and even Cornish. What Ireland
tted
> to
did
EARLY SAGA AND ROMANCE 277
did produce, and produce nobly and well, was romance ; from
the first to the last, from the seventh to the seventeenth
century, Irishmen, without distinction of class, alike delighted
in the ursgeul.
When this form of literature first came into vogue we have no
means of ascertaining, but the narrative prose probably developed
at a very early period as a supplement to defective narrative
verse. Not that verse or prose were then and there committed
to writing, for it is said that the business of the bards was
learn their stories by heart. I take it, however, that they
not actually do this, but merely learned the incidents of a story
in their regular sequence, and that their training enabled them
to fill these up and clothe them on the spur of the moment in
the most effective garments, decking them out with passages
of gaudy description, with rattling alliterative lines and "runs"
and abundance of adjectival declamation. The bards, no
matter from what quarter of the island, had all to know the
same story or novel, provided it was a renowned one, but with
each the sequence of incidents, and the incidents themselves
were probably for a long time the same ; but the language in }
which they were tricked out and the length to which they ;
were spun depended probably upon the genius or bent of each
particular bard. Of course in process of time divergences
began to arise, and hence different versions of the same story.
That, at least, is how I account for such passages as " but others
say that it was not there he was killed, but in," etc., " but some
of the books say that it was not on this wise it happened, but,"
and so on.
It is probable that very many novels were in existence before
the coming of St. Patrick, but highly unlikely that they were
at that time written down at full length. It was probably only
after the country had become Christianised and full of schools
and learning that the bards experienced the desire of writing
down their sagas, with as much as they could recapture of the
ancient poetry upon which they were built. In the Book of.
278 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
Leinster, a manuscript of the twelfth century, we find an
extraordinary- list of no less than 187 of those romances with
THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY of which an ollamh had to be
acquainted. The ollamh was the highest dignitary amongst
the bards, and it took him from nine to twelve years' training
to learn the two hundred and fifty prime stories and the one
hundred secondary ones along with the other things which
were required of him. The prime stories — combinations of
epic and novel, prose and poetry — are divided in the manu-
scripts into the following romantic catalogue : — Destruc-
tions of fortified places, Cow spoils (z.^., cattle-raiding
expeditions), Courtships or wooings, Battles, Cave-stories,
Navigations, Tragical deaths, Feasts, Sieges, Adventures,
Elopements, Slaughters, Water-eruptions, Expeditions, Pro-
gresses, and Visions. " He is no poet," says the Book of
Leinster, "who does not synchronise and harmonise all the
stories." We possess, as I have said, the names of 187 such
stories in the Book of Leinster, and the names of many more
are given in the tenth- or eleventh-century tale of Mac
Coise ; and all the known ones, with the exception of one tale
added later on, and one which, evidently through an error in
transcription, refers to Arthur instead of Aithirne, are about
events prior to the year 650 or thereabouts. We may take it,
then, that this list was drawn up in the seventh century.
Now, who were the authors of these couple of hundred
romances ? It is a natural question, but one which cannot be
answered. There is not a trace of their authorship remaining,
if authorship be the right word for what I suspect to have been
the gradual growth of race, tribal, and family history, and of
Celtic mythology, told and retold, and polished up, and added
to ; some of them, especially such as are the descendants of a
pagan mythology, must have been handed down for perhaps
countless generations, others recounted historical, tribal, or
family doings, magnified during the course of time, others again
of more recent date, are perhaps fairly accurate accounts of actual
EARLY SAGA AND ROMANCE 279
events, but all PRIOR TO ABOUT THE YEAR 650. I take it that
so soon as bardic schools and colleges began to be formed, there
was no class of learning more popular than that which taught
the great traditionary stories of the various tribes and families
of the great Gaelic race, and the intercommunication between
the bardic colleges propagated local tradition throughout all
Ireland.
The very essence of the national life of Erin was embodied
in these stories, but, unfortunately, few out of the enormous
mass have survived to our day, and these mostly mutilated or
in mere digests. Some, however, exist at nearly full length,
quite sufficient to show us what the romances were like, and
to cause us to regret the irreparable loss inflicted upon our race
by the ravages of Danes, Normans, and English. Even as it
is O'Curry asserts that the contents of the strictly historical
tales known to him would be sufficient to fill up four thousand
of the large pages of the " Four Masters." He computed that
the tales about Finn, Ossian, and the Fenians alone would fill
another three thousand pages. In addition to these we have a
considerable number of imaginative stories, neither historical nor
Fenian, such as the tc Three Sorrows of Story-telling " and
the like, sufficient to fill five thousand pages more, not to speak
of the more recent novel-like productions of the later Irish.1
It is this very great fecundity of the very early Irish in the
production of saga and romance, in poetry and prose, which
best enables us to judge of their early-developed genius, and
considerable primitive culture. The introduction of Chris-
tianity neither inspired these romances nor helped to produce
them ; they are nearly all anterior to it, and had they been
preserved to us we should now have the most remarkable body
of primitive myth and saga in the whole western world. It is
probably this consideration which makes M. Darmesteter say
1 O'Curry was no doubt accurate, as he ever is, in this computation, but
there would probably be some repetition in the stories, with lists of names
and openings common to more than one, and many late poor ones.
280 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
of Irish literature : " real historical documents we have none
until the beginning of the decadence — a decadence so glorious,
that we almost mistake it for a renaissance since the old epic
sap dries up only to make place for a new budding and
bourgeoning, a growth less original certainly, but scarcely less
wonderful if we consider the condition of continental Europe
at that date." The decadence that M. Darmesteter alludes to
is the rise of the Christian schools of the fifth and sixth
centuries, which put to some extent an end to the epic period
by turning men's thoughts into a different channel.
It is this " decadence," however, which I have preferred to
examine first, just because it does rest upon real historical
documents, and can be proved. We may now, however,
proceed to the mass of saga, the bulk of which in its earliest
forms is pagan, and the spirit of which, even in the latest
texts, has been seldom quite distorted by Christian influence.
This saga centres around several periods and individuals : some
of these, like Tuathal and the Boru tribute, Conaire the
Great and his death, have only one or two stories pertaining to
them. But there are three cycles which stand out pre-
eminently, and have been celebrated in more stories and sagas
than the rest, and of which more remains have been preserved
to us than of any of the others. These are the Mythological
Cycle concerning the Tuatha De Danann and the Pre-
Milesians ; the Heroic, Ultonian, or Red-Branch Cycle,1 in
which Cuchulain is the dominating figure; and the Cycle of
Finn mac Cumhail, Ossian, Oscar, and the High-kings of
Ireland who were their contemporaries — this cycle may be
denominated the Fenian or Ossianic.
1 M. d'Arbois de Jubainville calls this the Ulster, and calls the Ossianic
the Leinster Cycle.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE'
THE cycle of the mythological stories which group themselves
round the early invasions of Erin is sparsely represented in
Irish manuscripts. Not only is their number less, but their \
substance is more confused than that of the other cycles. To f
the comparative mythologist and the folk-lorist, however, they
are perhaps the most interesting of all, as throwing more light
than any of the others upon the early religious ideas of the
race. Most ' of the sagas connected with this pre-Milesian
cycle are now to be found only in brief digests preserved
in the Leabhar Gabhala,1 or Book of Invasions of Ireland, of — -
which large fragments exist in the Books of Leinster and
Bally mote, and which Michael O'Clery (collecting from all —
the ancient sources which he could find in his day) rewrote
about the year 1630.
This tells us all the early history of Ireland and of the races
that inhabited it before our forefathers landed. It tells us of
how first a man called Partholan made a settlement in Ireland,
but how in time he and his people all died of the plague,
leaving the land deserted ; and how after that the Nemedians,
or children of Nemed, colonised the island and multiplied in it,
1 " L'yowar (rhyming to hour) gow-awla," the " book of the takings or
holdings of Ireland."
282 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
until they began to be oppressed by the Fomorians, who are
usually described as African sea-robbers, but the etymology of
whose name seems to point to a mythological origin " men
from under sea." x A number of battles took place between the
rival hosts, and the Fomorians were defeated in three battles,
but after the death of Nemed, who, like Partholan, died of a
plague, the Fomorians oppressed his people again, and, led by
a chief called Conaing, built a great tower upon Tory, /.<?.,
Tower Island, off the north-west coast of Donegal. On the
eve of every Samhain [Sou-an, or All Hallow's] the wretched
Nemedians had to deliver up to these masters two-thirds of
their children, corn, and cattle. Driven to desperation by these
exactions they rose in arms, stormed the tower, and slew
Conaing, all which the Book of Invasions describes at length.
The Fomorians being reinforced, the Nemedians fought
them a second time in the same place, but in this battle most
of them were killed or drowned, the tide having come in and
washed over them and their foes alike. The crew of one ship,
however, escaped, and these, after a further sojourn of seven
years in Ireland, led out of it the surviving remnants of their
race with the exception of a very few who remained behind
subject to the Fomorians. Those who left Ireland divided
into three bands : one sought refuge in Greece, where they
again fell into slavery ; the second went — some say — to the
north of Europe ; and the third, headed by a chief called
Briton Mael — hence, say the Irish, the name of Great Britain
— found refuge in Scotland, where their descendants remained
until the Cruithni, or Picts, overcame them.
After a couple of hundred years the Nemedians who had
fled to Greece came back again, calling themselves Fir-
bolg,2 /.*., " sack " or " bag " men, and held Ireland for
1 Keating derives it from foghla, " spoil," and muir, " sea," which is an
impossible derivation, or from/o muirib, as if " along the seas," but it really
means "under seas."
2 Also Fir Domnan and Fir Galeoin, two tribes of the same race.
THE MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE 283
about thirty-five years in peace, when another tribe of invaders
appeared upon the scene. These were no less than the cele-
brated Tuatha De Danann, who turned out to be, in fact,
the descendants of the second band of Nemedians who had
fled to the north of Europe, and who returned about thirty-six
years later than their kinsmen, the Firbolg.
The Tuatha De Danann soon overcame the Firbolg, and '
drove them, after the Battle of North Moytura,1 into the
islands along the coast, to Aran, Islay, Rachlin, and the
Hebrides,2 after which they assumed the sovereignty of the
island to themselves.
This sovereignty they maintained for about two hundred
1 When the oldest list of current Irish sagas was drawn up, probably in
the seventh century, only one battle of Moytura was mentioned ; this was
evidently what is now known as the second battle. In the more recent list
contained in the introduction to the Senchus Mor there is mention made of
both battles. There is only a single copy of each of these sagas known to
exist. Of most of the other sagas of this cycle even the last copy has
perished.
2 Long afterwards, at the time that Ireland was divided into five pro-
vinces, the Cruithnigh, or Picts, drove the Firbolg out of the islands again,
and they were forced to come back to Cairbre Niafer, king of Leinster,
who allotted them a territory, but placed such a rack-rent upon them that
they were glad to fly into Connacht, where Oilioll and Meve — the king
and queen who made the Tain Bo Chuailgne — gave them a free grant of
land, and there Duald Mac Firbis, over two hundred and fifty years ago,
found their descendants in plenty. According to some accounts, they were
never driven wholly out of Connacht, and if they are a real race — as,
despite their connection with the obviously mythical Tuatha De Danann,
they appear to be — they probably still form the basis of population there.
Maine Mor, the ancestor of the O'Kellys, is said to have wrested from them
the territory of Ui Maine (part of Roscommon and Galway) in the sixth
century. Their name and that of their fellow tribe, the Fir Domnan,
appear to be the same as the Belgae, and the Damnonii of Gaul and
Britain, who are said to have given its name to Devonshire. Despite their
close connection in the Book of Invasions and early history of Ireland, the
Firbolg stand on a completely different footing from the De Danann
tribes. Their history is recorded consecutively from that day to this ;
many families trace their pedigree to them, and they never wholly dis-
appeared. No family traces its connection to the De Danann people ;
they wholly disappear, and are in later times regarded as gods, or demons,
or fairies.
284 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
years, until the ancestors of the present Irish, the Scots, or Gaels,
or Milesians, as they are variously called, landed and beat the
Tuatha De Danann, and reigned in their stead until they, too,
in their turn were conquered by the English. The Book of
Conquests is largely concerned with their landing and first
: settlements and their battles with the De Danann people
[ whom they ended in completely overcoming, after which the
\ Tuatha De assume a very obscure position. They appear to
have for the most part retired off the surface of the country
into the green hills and mounds, and lived in these, often
appearing amongst the Milesian population, and sometimes
giving their daughters in marriage to them. From this out
they are confounded with the Sidhe [Shee], or spirits, now called
fairies, and to this very day I have heard old men, when
speaking of the fairies who inhabit ancient raths and interfere
occasionally in mortal concerns either for good or evil, call
them by the name of the Tuatha De Danann.
The first battle of Moytura was fought between the Tuatha
De Danann and the Firbolg, who were utterly routed, but
Nuada, the king of the Tuatha De, lost his hand in the
battle. As he was thus suffering from a personal blemish, he
could be no longer king, and the people accordingly decided
to bestow the sovereignty on Breas [Bras], * whose mother was
a De Danann, but whose father was a king of the Fomorians,
a people who had apparently never lost sight of or wholly left
Ireland since the time of their battles with the Nemedians
over two hundred years before. The mother of Breas, Eiriu,2
was a person of authority, and her son was elected to the
sovereignty on the understanding that if his reign was found
unsatisfactory he should resign. He gave seven pledges of his
intention of doing so. At this time the Fomorians again
1 Bress in the older form.
3 When the Milesians landed they found a Tuatha De Danann queen,
called Eiriu, the old form of Eire or Erin, from whom the island was
believed to take its name. John Scotus is called in old authorities Eriu-
gena, not Erigena.
THE MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE 285
smote Ireland heavily with their imposts and taxes, as they had
done before when the Nemedians inhabited it. The unfortu-
nate De Dannan people were reduced to a state of misery.
Ogma * was obliged to carry wood, and the Dagda himself to
build raths for their masters, and they were so far reduced as
to be weak with hunger.
In the meantime the kingship of Breas was not successful.
He was hard and niggardly. As the saga of the second battle
of Moytura puts it —
" The chiefs of the Tuatha De Danann were dissatisfied, for Breas
did not grease their knives ; in vain came they to visit Breas ; their
breaths did not smell of ale. Neither their poets, nor bards, nor
druids, nor harpers, nor flute-players, nor musicians, nor jugglers,
nor fools appeared before them, nor came into the palace to amuse
them."
Matters reached a crisis when the poet Coirpne came to
demand hospitality and was shown " into a little house, small,
narrow, black, dark, where was neither fire nor furniture nor
bed. He was given three little dry loaves on a little plate.
When he rose in the morning he was not thankful." He
gave vent then to the first satire ever uttered in Ireland, which
is still preserved in eight lines which would be absolutely
unintelligible except for the ancient glosses.
After this the people of the De Danann race demanded the
abdication of Breas, which he had promised in case his reign did
not please them. He acknowledged his obligation to them, but
requested a delay of seven years, which they allowed him, on
condition that he gave them guarantees to touch nothing
belonging to them during that time, " neither our houses nor
our lands, nor our gold, nor our silver, nor our cattle, nor
anything eatable, we shall pay thee neither rent nor fine to the
end of seven years." This was agreed to.
But the intention of Breas in demanding a delay of seven
years was a treacherous one ; he meant to approach his father's
1 For him sec above, pp. 113-15.
286 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
kindred the Fomorians, and move them to reinstate him at the
point of the sword. He goes to his mother who tells him
who his father is, for up to that time he had remained in
ignorance of it ; and she gives him a ring whereby his father
Elatha, a king of the Fomorians, may recognise him. He
departs to the Fomorians, discovers his father and appeals to
him for succour. By his father he is sent to Balor, a king of
the Fomorians of the Isles of Norway — a locality probably
ascribed to the Fomorians after the invasions of the North-
men— and there gathered together an immense army to subdue
the Tuatha De Danann and give the island to their relation
Breas.
In the meantime Nuada, whose hand had been replaced by
a silver one, reascends the throne and is joined by Lugh of the
Long-hand, the " Ildana " or "man of various arts." This Lugh
was a brother of the Dagda and of Ogma, and is perhaps the
best-known figure among the De Danann personalities. Lugh
and the Dagda and Ogma and Goibniu the smith and Dian-
cecht the leech met secretly every day at a place in Meath for
a whole year, and deliberated how best to shake off the yoke
of the Fomorians. Then they held a general meeting of the
Tuatha De and spoke with each one in secret.
"'How wilt thou show thy power?' said Lugh, to the sorcerer
Mathgen.
" ' By my art,' answered Mathgen, ' I shall throw down the moun-
tains of Ireland upon the Fomorians, and they shall fall with their
heads to the earth ; ' then told he to Lugh the names of the twelve
principal mountains of Ireland which were ready to do the bidding
of the goddess Dana ' and to smite their enemies on every side.
1 Jubainville translates Tuatha De Danann by " tribes of the goddess
Dana." Danann is the genitive of Dana, and Dana is called the '• mother
of the gods," but she is not a mother of the bulk of the De Danann
race, so that Jubainville's translation is a rather venturesome one, and
the Old Irish themselves did not take the word in this meaning ; they
explained it as "the men of science who were as it were gods." "Tuatha
de Danann, i.e., Dee in taes dana acus ande an taes trebtha," i.e., " the men
of science were (as it were) gods and the laymen no-gods."
THE MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE 287
" Lugh asked the cup-bearer : ' In what way wilt thou show thy
power ? '
" ' I shall place/ answered the cup-bearer, ' the twelve principal
lakes of Ireland under the eyes of the Fomorians, but they shall find
no water in them, however great the thirst which they may feel ; '
and he enumerated the lakes, ' from the Fomorians the water shall
hide itself, they shall not be able to take a drop of it ; but the same
lakes will furnish the Tuatha De Danann with water to drink during
the whole war, though it should last seven years.'
" The Druid Figal, the son of Mamos, said, ' I shall make three
rains of fire fall on the faces of the Fomorian warriors ; I shall take
from them two-thirds of their valour and courage, but so often as
the warriors of the De Danann shall breathe out the air from their
breasts, so often shall they feel their courage and valour and strength
increase. Even though the war should last seven years it shall not
fatigue them.'
" The Dagda answered, ' All the feats which you three, sorcerer,
cup-bearer, druid, say you can do, I myself alone shall do them.'
" ' It is you then are the Dagda/1 said those present, whence came
the name of the Dagda which he afterwards bore."
Lugh then went in search of the three gods of Dana —
Brian, luchar, and lucharba (whom he afterwards put to
death for slaying his father, as is recorded at length in the
saga of the u Fate of the Children of Tuireann " 2) and
with these and his other allies he spent the next seven years
in making preparations for the great struggle with the
Fomorians.
This saga and the whole story of the Tuatha De Danann
contending with the Fomorians, who are in one place in the
saga actually called sidhe, or spirits, is all obviously mytho-
logical, and has usually been explained, by D'Arbois de Jubain-
ville and others, as the struggle between the gods or good
spirits and the evil deities.
1 Whitley Stokes translates this by "good hand." It is explained
as — Dago-devo-s, " the good god." The "Dagda, i.e., daigh de, i.e., dea
sainemail ag na geinntib e," i.e., " Dagda ie ignis Dei," for " with the
heathen he was a special god," MS. 16, Advocates' Library, Edinburgh.
2 Paraphrased by me in English verse in the " Three Sorrows of
Story-telling."
288 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
The following episode also shows the wild mythological
character of the whole.
" Dagda," says the saga, " had a habitation at Glenn-Etin in the north.
He had arranged to meet a woman at Glenn-Etin on the day of
Samhan [November day] just a year, day for day, before the battle
of Moytura. The Unius, a river of Connacht, flows close beside
Glenn-Etin, to the south. Dagda saw the woman bathe herself in the
Unius at [Kesri] Coran. One of the woman's feet in the water
touched Allod Eche, that is to say Echumech to the south, the
other foot also in the water touched Lescuin in the north. Nine
tresses floated loose around her head. Dagda approached and
accosted her. From thenceforth the place has been named the
Couple's Bed. The woman was the goddess Mor-rigu" —
the goddess of war, of whom we shall hear more in connection
with Cuchulain.
As for the Dagda himself, his character appears somewhat
contradictory. Just as the most opposite accounts of Zeus are
met with in Greek mythology, some glorifying him as thron-
ing in Olympus supreme over gods and men, others as playing
low and indecent tricks disguised as a cuckoo or a bull ; so we
find the Dagda — his real name was Eochaidh the Ollamh
— at one time a king of the De Danann race and organiser
of victory, but at another in a less dignified but more clearly
mythological position.^ He is sent by Lugh to the Fomorian
camp to put them off with talk and cause them to lose time
until the De Danann armaments should be more fully ready.
The following account exhibits him, like Zeus at times, in a
very unprepossessing character : —
" When the Dagda had come to the camp of the Fomorians he
demanded a truce, and he obtained it. The Fomorians prepared
a porridge for him ; it was to ridicule him they did this, for he
greatly loved porridge. They filled for him the king's cauldron
which was five handbreadths in depth. They threw into it eighty
pots of milk and a proportionate quantity of meal and fat, with goats
and sheep and swine which they got cooked along with the rest.
Then they poured the broth into a hole dug in the ground. ' Unless
you eat all that's there,' said Indech to him, 'you shall be put to
THE MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE 289
death ; we do not want you to be reproaching us, and we must
satisfy you.' The Dagda took the spoon ; it was so great that in the
hollow of it a man and a woman might be contained. The pieces
that went into that spoon were halves of salted pigs and quarters of
bacon. The Dagda said, ' Here is good eating, if the broth be as
good as its odour,' and as he carried the spoonful to his mouth, he
said, ' The proverb is true that good cooking is not spoiled by a
bad pot.' *
" When he had finished he scraped the ground with his finger to
the very bottom of the hole to take what remained of it, and after
that he went to sleep to digest his soup. His stomach was greater
than the greatest cauldrons in large houses, and the Fomorians
mocked at him.
" He went away and came to the bank of the Eba. He did not
walk with ease, so large was his stomach. He was dressed in very
bad guise. He had a cape which scarcely reached below his
shoulders. Beneath that cloak was seen a brown mantle which
descended no lower than his hips. It was cut away above and very
large in the breast. His two shoes were of horses' skin with the
hair outside. He held a wheeled fork, which would have been
heavy enough for eight men, and he let it trail behind him. It dug
a furrow deep enough and large enough to become the frontier
mearn between two provinces. Therefore is it called the ' track of
the Dagda's club.'"
When the fighting began, after the skirmishing of the first
days, the De Danann warriors owed their victory to their
superior preparations. The great leech Diancecht cured the
wounded, and the smith Goibniu and his assistants kept the
warriors supplied with constant relays of fresh lances. The
Fomorians could not understand it, and sent one of their
warriors, apparently in disguise, to find out. He was Ruadan,
a son of Breas by a daughter of Dagda.
"On his return he told the Fomorians what the smith, the carpenter,
the worker in bronze, and the four leeches who were round the
spring, did. They sent him back again with orders to kill the smith
Goibniu. He asked a spear of Goibniu, rivets of Credne the bronze-
worker, a shaft of Luchtaine the carpenter, and they gave him
what he asked. There was a woman there busy in sharpening the
1 Thus perilously translated by Jubainville ; Stokes does not attempt it.
T
290 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
weapons. She was Cron, mother of Fianlug. She sharpened the
spear for Ruadan. It was a chief who handed Ruadan the spear,
and thence the name of chief-spear given to this day to the
weaver's beam in Erin.
"When he had got the spear Ruadan turned on Goibniu and smote
him with the weapon. But Goibniu drew the javelin from the
wound and hurled it at Ruadan ; who was pierced from side to side,
and escaped to die among the Fomorians in presence of his father.
Brig [his mother, the Dagda's daughter] came and bewailed her
son. First she uttered a piercing cry, and thereafter she made
moan. It was then that for the first time in Ireland were heard
moans and cries of sorrow. It was that same Brig who invented
the whistle used at night to give alarm signals" —
the mythological genesis of the saga is thus obviously marked
by the first satire, first cry of sorrow, and first whistle being
ascribed to the actors in it.
In the end the whole Fomorian army moved to battle in
their solid battalions, " and it was to strike one's hand against
a rock, or thrust one's hand into a nest of serpents, or put
one's head into the fire, to attack the Fomorians that day."
The battle is described at length. Nuada the king of the De
Danann is killed oy Balor. Lugh, whose counsel was con-
sidered so valuable by the De Danann people that they put an
escort of nine round him to prevent him from taking part in
the fighting, breaks away, and attacks Balor the Fomorian
king.
" Balor had an evil eye, that eye only opened itself upon the
plain of battle. Four men had to lift up the eyelid by placing
under it an instrument. The warriors, whom Balor scanned
with that eye once opened,1 could not — no matter how numerous
— resist their enemies."
When Lugh had met and exchanged some mystical and
1 A legend well known to the old men of Gal way and Roscommon, who
have often related it to me, tells us that when Conan (Finn mac Cumhail's
Thersites) looked through his fingers at the enemy, they were always
defeated. He himself did not know this, nor any one except Finn, who
tried to make use of it without letting Conan know his own power.
THE MYTHOLOGICAL CYCLE 291
unintelligible language with him, Balor said, " Raise my
eyelid that I may see the braggart who speaks with me."
" His people raise Balor's eyelid. Lugh from his sling lets
fly a stone at Balor which passes through his head, carrying
with it the venomous eye. Balor's army looked on." The
Mor-rigu, the goddess of war, arrives, and assists the Tuatha De
Danann and encourages them. Ogma slays one of the
Fomorian kings and is slain himself. The battle is broken
at last on the Fomorians ; they fly, and Breas is taken
prisoner, but his life is spared.
" It was," says the saga, " at the battle of Moytura that Ogma,
the strong man, found the sword of Tethra, the King of the
Fomorians. Ogma drew that sword from the sheath and cleaned
it. It was then that it related to him all the high deeds that it had
accomplished, for at this time the custom was when swords were
drawn from the sheath they used to recite the exploits T they had
themselves been the cause of. And thence comes the right which
swords have, to be cleaned when they are drawn from the sheath ;
thence also the magic power which swords have preserved ever
since " —
to which curious piece of pagan superstition an evidently
later Christian redactor adds, " weapons were the organs of
the demon to speak to men. At that time men used to
worship weapons, and they were a magic safeguard."
The saga ends in the episode of the recovery of the Dagda's
harp, and in the cry of triumph uttered by the Mor-ngu and
by Bodb, her fellow-goddess of war, as they visited the various
heights of Ireland, the banks of streams, and the mouths of
floods and great rivers, to proclaim aloud their triumph and
the defeat of the Fomorians.
M. d'Arbois de Jubainville sees in the successive colonisations
of Partholan, the Nemedians, and the Tuatha De Danann, an
Irish version of the Greek legend of the three successive ages
1 There is a somewhat similar passage ascribing sensation to swords in
the Saga of Cuchulain's sickness.
292 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
of gold, silver, and brass. The Greek legend of the Chimaera,
otherwise Bellerus, the monster slain by Bellerophon, he
equates with the Irish Balor of the evil eye ; the fire from the
throat of Bellerus, and the evil beam shot from Balor's eye may
originally have typified the lightning.1
1 The First Battle of Moytura, the Second Battle of Moytura, and the
Death of the Children of Tuireann are three sagas belonging to this cycle.
Others, now preserved in the digest of the Book of Invasions, are, the Pro-
gress of Partholan to Erin, the Progress of Nemed to Erin, the Progress of
the Firbolg, the Progress of the Tuatha De Danann, the Journey of Mile-
son of Bile to Spain, the Journey of the Sons of Mile from Spain to Erin,
the Progress of the Cruithnigh (Picts) from Thrace to Erin and thence
into Alba.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE HEROIC OR RED BRANCH CYCLE CUCHULAIN ^
THE mythological tales that we have been glancing at deal
with the folk who are fabled as having first colonised Erin ;
they treat of peoples, races, dynasties, the struggle between
good and evil principles. The whole of their creations are
thrown back, even by the Irish annalists themselves, into the
dim cloud-land of an unplumbed past, ages before the dawn
of the first Olympiad, or the birth of the wolf-suckled twins
who founded Rome. There is over it all a shadowy sense of
vagueness, vastness, uncertainty.
The Heroic Cycle, on the other hand, deals with the history
of the Milesians themselves, the present Irish race, within a _
well-defined space of time, upon their own ground, and though
it does not exactly fall within the historical period, yet it does
not come so far short of it that it can be with any certainty
rejected as pure work of imagination or poetic fiction. It is
certainly the finest of the three greater saga-cycles, and the —
epics that belong to it are sharply drawn, numerous, clear cut,
and ancient, and for the first time we seem, at least, to find
ourselves upon historical ground, although a good deal of this
seeming may turn out to be illusory. Yet the figures of
Cuchulain, Conor mac Nessa, Naoise, and Deirdre, Meve,
293
294 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
Oilioll, and Conall Cearnach, have about them a great deal of
the circumstantiality that is entirely lacking to the dim, mist-
magnified, and distorted figures of the Dagda, Nuada, Lugh
the Long-handed, and their fellows.
The gods come and go as in the Iliad, and according to
some accounts leave their posterity behind them. Cuchulain
himself, the incarnation of Irish apicrriiuy is according to
certain authorities the son of the god Lugh the Long-handed.1
He himself, like another Anchises, is beloved of a goddess and
descends into the Gaelic Elysium,2 and the most important
epic of the cycle is largely conditioned by an occurrence
caused by the curse of a goddess, an occurrence wholly im-
possible and supernatural.3 Yet these are for the most part
excrescences no more affecting the conduct of the history
than the actions of the gods affect the war round Troy.
Events, upon the whole, are motivated upon fairly reasonable
human grounds, and there is a certain air of probability
about them. The characters who now make their appearance
upon the scene are not long prior to, or are contemporaneous
1 See " Compert Conculaind," by Windisch in " Irische Texte," t. i. p.
134, and Jubainville's " Epopee Celtique en Irlande," p. 22.
2 See the story of Cuchulain's sick-bed, translated by O'Curry in the first
volume of the " Atlantis," and by Mr. O'Looney in Sir J. Gilbert's " Fac-
similes of the National MSS. of Ireland," and by Windisch in " Irische
Texte," vol. i., pp. 195-234, and by M. de Jubainville in his " Epopee
Celtique," p. 174, and lastly, Mr. Nutt's " Voyage of Bran," vol. ii., p. 38.
3 This is the periodic curse which overtook the Ulstermen at certain
periods, rendering them feeble as a woman in child-bed, in consequence
of the malediction of the goddess Macha, who was, just before the birth of
her children, inhumanly obliged by the Ultonians to run against the king's
horses. The only people of the northern province free from this curse
were the children born before the curse was uttered, the women, arid the
hero Cuchulain. It transmitted itself from father to son for nine genera-
tions, and is said to have lasted five nights and four days, or four nights
and five days. But one would think from the Tain Bo Chuailgne that it
must have lasted much longer. For this curse see Jubainville's " Epopee
Celtique," p. 320. I was, not long ago, told a story by a peasant in the
county Galway not unlike it, only it was related of the mother of the
celebrated boxer Donnelly.
THE RED BRANCH CYCLE— CUCHULAIN 295
with, the birth of Christ ; and the wars of the Tuatha De
Danann, Nemedians, and Fomorians, are left some seventeen
hundred years behind.
This cycle, which I have called the " Heroic " or " Red
Branch," might also be named the " Ultonian," because it
deals chiefly with the heroes of the northern province. One
saga relates the birth of Conor mac Nessa. His mother was
Ness and his father was Fachtna Fathach, king of Ulster, but
according to what is probably the oldest account, his father
was Cathba the Druid. This saga relates how, through the
stratagem of his mother Ness, Conor slipped into the kingship
of Ulster, displacing Fergus mac Roigh [Roy], the former king,
who is here represented as a good-natured giant, but who appears
human enough in the other sagas.1 Conor's palace is described
with its three buildings ; that of the Red Branch, where were
kept the heads and arms of vanquished enemies ; that of the
Royal Branch, where the kings lodged ; and that of the
Speckled House, where were laid up the shields and spears
and swords of the warriors of Ulster. It was called the
Speckled or Variegated House from the gold and silver of the
shields, and gleaming of the spears, and shining of the goblets,
and all arms were kept in it, in order that at the banquet
when quarrels arose the warriors might not have wherewith
to slay each other.
Conor's palace at Emania contained, according to the Book
of Leinster, one hundred and fifty rooms, each large enough
for three couples to sleep in, constructed of red oak, and
bordered with copper. Conor's own chamber was decorated
with bronze and silver, and ornamented with golden birds, in
whose eyes were precious stones, and was large enough for thirty
1 Except in one place in the Tain Bo Chuailgne, where his sword is
spoken of, which was like a thread in his hand, but which when he smote
with it extended itself to the size of a rainbow, with three blows of which
upon the ground he raised three hills. The description of Fergus in the
Conor story preserved in the Book of Leinster, is simply and frankly
that of a giant many times the size of an ordinary man.
296 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
warriors to drink together in it. Above the king's head hung
his silver wand with three golden apples, and when he shook
it silence reigned throughout the palace, so that even the fall
of a pin might be heard. A large vat, always full of good
drink, stood ever on the palace floor.
Another story tells of Cuchulain's mysterious parentage.
His mother was a sister of King Conor ; consequently he was
the king's nephew.
Another again relates the wooing of Cuchulain, and how
; he won Emer for his wife.
Another is called Cuchulain's "Up-bringing," or teaching, part
of which, however, is found in the piece called the " Wooing
of Emer." This saga relates how he, with two other of the
Ultonians, went abroad to Alba to perfect their warlike
accomplishments, and how they placed themselves under the
tuition of different female-warriors,1 who taught them various
and extraordinary feats of arms. He traverses the plain ot
Misfortune by the aid of a wheel and of an apple given him
by an unknown friend, and reaches the great female instructress
Scathach, whose daughter falls in love with him.
An admirable example occurs to me here, of showing in the
concrete that which I have elsewhere laid stress upon, namely,
the great elaboration which in many instances we find in the
modern versions of sagas, compared with the antique vellum
texts. It does not at all follow that because a story is written
down with brevity in ancient Irish, it was also told with
brevity. The oldest form of the saga of Cuchulain's " Wooing
of Emer" contains traces of a pre-Danish or seventh-century
text, but the condensed and shortened relation of the saga
found in the oldest manuscript of it, is almost certainly not
the form in which the bards and ollavs related it. On the
contrary, I believe that the stories now epitomised in ancient
vellum texts were even then told, though not written down,
1 The female warrior and war-teacher was not uncommon among the
Celts, as the examples of Boadicea and of Meve of Connacht show.
THE RED BRANCH CYCLE— CUCHULAIN 297
at full length, and with many flourishes by the bards and
professed story-tellers, and that the skeletons merely, or as
Keating calls it, the " bones of the history," * were in most
instances all that was committed to the rare and expensive
parchments. It is more than likely that the longer modern
paper redactions, though some of the ancient pagan traits,
especially those most incomprehensible to the moderns, may
be missing, yet represent more nearly the manner of the
original bardic telling, than the abridgments of twelfth or
thirteenth-century vellums.
In this case the ancient recension,2 founded on a pre-Danish
text, merely mentions that Scathach's house, at which Cuchulain
arrives, after leaving the plain of Misfortune,
"was built upon a rock of appalling height. Cuchulain followed
the road pointed out to him. He reached the castle of Scathach.
He knocked at the door with the handle of his spear and entered.
Uathach, the daughter of Scathach, meets him. She looked at him,
but she spoke not, so much did the hero's beauty make her love
him. She went to her mother and told her of the beauty of the man
who had newly come. ' That man has pleased you,' said her mother.
' He shall come to my couch/ answered the girl, ' and I shall sleep
at his side this night.' ' Thy intention displeases me not,' said her
mother."
One can see at a glance how bald and brief is all this, because
it is a precis, and vellum was scarce. I venture to say that no
bard ever told it in this way. The scribes who first committed
this to parchment, say in the seventh or eighth century, probably
wrote down only the leading incidents as they remembered
them. They may not have been themselves either bards,
ollavs, or story-tellers. It is chiefly in the later centuries,
after the introduction of paper, when the economising of
space ceased to be a matter of importance, that we find our
sagas told with all the redundancy of description, epithet, and
incident with which I suspect the very earliest bards em-
bellished all those sagas of which we have now only little more
1 " Cnamha an tseanchusa." 3 Rawlinson, B. 512.
298 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
\
than the skeletons. Compare, for instance, the ancient version
which I have just given, with the longer modern versions which
have come down to us in several paper manuscripts, of which I
here use one in my own possession, copied about the beginning
of the century by a scribe named O'Mahon, upon one of the
islands on the Shannon.
In the first place this version tells us that on his arrival at
Scathach's mansion he finds a number of her scholars and other
warriors engaged in hurling outside the door of her fortress.
He joins in the game and defeats them — this is a true folk-lore
introduction. He finds there Naoise, Ardan, and Ainnle, the
three sons of Usnach, celebrated in perhaps the most touching
saga of this whole cycle, and another son of Erin with them.
This is a literary touch, by one who knew his literature.1
Learning that he is come from Erin, they ask news of their native
country, and salute him with kisses. They then bring him to
the Bridge of the Cliffs, and show him what their work is
during the first year, which was learning to pass this bridge.
" Wonderful," says the saga, " was the sight that bridge afforded
when any one would leap upon it, for it narrowed until it became as
narrow as the hair of one's head, and the second time it shortened
until it became as short as an inch, and the third time it grew
slippery until it was as slippery as an eel of the river, and the
fourth time it rose up on high against you until it was as tall as the
mast of a ship."
All the warriors and people on the lawn came down to see
Cuchulain attempting to cross this bridge. In the meantime
Scathach's grianan or sunny house is described : " It had seven
great doors, and seven great windows between every two doors
of them, and thrice fifty couches between every two windows
of them, and thrice fifty handsome marriageable girls, in scarlet
cloaks, and in beautiful and blue attire, attending and waiting
upon Scathach."
1 For Deirdre in her lament over the three does call them " three
pupils of Scathach."
THE RED BRANCH CYCLE— CUCHULAIN 299
Then Scathach's lovely daughter, looking from the windows
of the grianan, perceives the stranger attempting the feat of
the bridge, and she falls in love with him upon the spot. Her
emotions are thus described : " Her face and colour constantly
changed, so that now she would be as white as a little white
flowret, and again she would become scarlet," and in the work
she was embroidering she put the gold thread where the silver
thread should be, and the silver thread into the place where
the gold thread should go ; and when her mother notices it,
she excuses herself by saying beautifully, "I would greatly
grieve should he not return alive to his own people, in what-
ever part of the world they may be, for I know that there
is some one to whom it would be anguish to know that he
is thus."
This refined reflection of the girl we may with certainty
ascribe to the growth of modern sentiment, and it is extremely
instructive to compare it with the ancient, and no doubt really
pagan version ; but I strongly suspect that the bridge over the
cliffs is no modern embellishment at all, but part of the original
saga, though omitted from the pre-Norse text which only tells us
that Scathach's house was on the top of a rock of appalling
height.
It was during this sojourn of Cuchulain in foreign lands
that he overcame the heroine Aoife,1 and forced her into a
marriage with himself. He returned home afterwards, having
left instructions with her to keep the child she should bear
him, if it were a daughter, " for with every mother goes the
daughter," but if it were a son she was to rear him until he
should be able to perform certain hero-feats, and until his
finger should be large enough to fill a ring which Cuchulain
left with her for him. Then she was to send him into
Erin, and bid him tell no man who he was ; also he desired
1 Pronounced " Eefa." The triphthong aoi has always the sound of ce
in English. The stepmother of the Children of Lir was also called
Aoife.
300 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
her not to teach him the feat of the Gae-Bulg, "but,
however," says the saga, " it was ill that command turned
out, for it was of that it came to pass that Conlaoch [the son]
fell by Cuchulain." *
I know of no prose saga of the touching story of the death
of this son, slain by his own father, except the resume given of
it by Keating,2 but there exists a poem or Epopee upon the
subject which was always a great favourite with the Irish
scribes, and of which numerous but not ancient copies exist.
This is the Irish Sohrab and Rustum, the Celtic Hildebrand
and Hadubrand. The son comes into Ireland, but in con-
sequence of his mother's command, refuses to tell his name.
This is looked upon as indicating hostility, and many of the
Ultonians fight with him, but he overcomes them all, even the
great Conall Cearnach. Conor in despair sends for Cuchulain,
who with difficulty slays him by the feat of the Gae-Bolg,
and then finds out when too late that the dying champion is
his own son. So familiar to the modern Irish scribes was this
piece that in my copy, in the last verse, which ends with
Cuchulain's lament over his son —
" I am the bark (buffeted) from wave to wave,
I am the ship after the losing of its rudder,
1 I quote this from my paper version. The oldest text only says that
" Cuchulain told her that she should bear him a son, and that upon a
certain day in seven years' time that son should go to him ; he told her what
name she should give him, and then he went away."
2 P. 279 of John O'Mahony's edition, translated also by M. de Jubain-
ville in his " Epopee Celtique," who comparing the Irish story with its
Germanic counterpart expresses himself strongly on their relative merits :
" Tout est puissant, logique, primitif, dans la piece irlandaise ; sa concord-
ance avec la piece persanne atteste une haute antiquite. Elle peut remonter
aux epoques celtiques les plus anciennes, et avoir ete du nombre des
carmina chantes par les Gaulois a la bataille de Clusium en 295 av. J. — C.
Le poeme allemand dont on a une copie du huitieme siecle est une
imitation inintelligente et affaiblie du chant celtique qui a du retentir sur
les rives du Danube et du Mein mille ans plus tot, et dont la redaction
germanique est 1'ceuvre de quelque naif Macpherson, predecesseur
honnetement inhabile de celui du dix-huitieme siecle."
THE RED BRANCH CYCLE— CUCHULAIN 301
I am the apple upon the top of the tree
That little thought of its falling." *
instead of the text of the third line stands a rough picture of a
tree with a large apple on the top !
Another saga2 tells of Cuchulain's geasa [gassa] or restric-
tions. It was gels or tabu to him to narrate his genealogy
to one champion, as it was also to his son Conlaoch, to refuse
combat to any one man, to look upon the exposed bosom of
a woman, to come into a company without a second invita-
tion, to accept the hospitality of virgins, to boast to a woman,
to let the sun rise before him in E mania, he must when there
rise before it, etc. There is in this saga a graphic description
of the pagan king's retinue journeying with him to be fed in
the house of a retainer.
" All the Ultonian nobles set out ; a great train of provincials, sons
of kings and chiefs, young lords and men-at-arms, the curled and
rosy youth of the kingdom, and the maidens and fair ringleted
ladies of Ulster. Handsome virgins, accomplished damsels, and
splendid, fully-developed women were there. Satirists and scholars
were there, and the companies of singers and musicians, poets who
composed songs and reproofs, and praising-poems for the men of
Ulster. There came also with them from Emania historians, judges,
horse-riders, buffoons, tumblers, fools, and performers on horseback.
They all went by the same way, behind the king." 3
Dismissing Cuchulain for the present, we pass on now to
another personality of the Red Branch saga — the Lady
D&rdre.
1 " Is me an bare o thuinn go tuinn,
Is me an long iar ndul d'a stiur.
Is me an t-ubhall i mbarr an chroinn
Is beag do shaoil a thuitim."
See Miss Brooke's "Reliquesof Ancient Irish Poetry," 2nd ed. p. 393.
See also Kuno Meyer's note at p. xv of his edition of Cath Finntragha, in
which he bears further evidence to the antiquity and persistence of this
story.
2 See the Book of Leinster, 107-111, a MS. copied about the year 1150.
3 Thus translated by my late lamented friend and accomplished scholar
Father James Keegan of St. Louis.
CHAPTER XXV
DEIRDRE
ONE of the key-stone stories of the Red Branch Cycle is
D&rdre, or the Fate of the Children of Usnach. Cuchulain,
though he appears in this saga, is not a prominent figure in it.
This piece is perhaps the finest, most pathetic, and best-
conceived of any in the whole range of our literature. But
like much of that literature it exists in the most various
recensions, and there are different accounts given of the death
of all the principal characters.
This saga commences with the birth of D£irdre. King
Conor and his Ultonians had gone to drink and feast in the
house of Felim, Conor's chief story-teller, and during their
stay there Felim's wife gives birth to a daughter. Cathba the
Druid prophesies concerning the infant, and foretells that much
woe and great calamities shall yet come upon Ulster because
of her. He names her Deirdre.1 The Ultonians are smitten
with horror at his prophecies, and order her to be instantly put
to death. The most ancient text, that of the twelfth-century
Book of Leinster, tells the beginning of this saga exceedingly
tersely.
1 Pronounced " Dare-dra," said to mean " alarm." Jubainville translates it
1 ' Celle-qui-se-debat."
DblRDRE 303
" ' Let the girl be slain/ cried the warriors. ' Not so,' said King
Conor, ' but bring ye her to me to-morrow ; she shall be brought up
as I shall order, and she shall be the woman whom I shall marry.'
The Ultonians ventured not to contradict the King ; they did as he
commanded.
" Deirdre was brought up in Conor's house. She became the
handsomest maiden in Ireland. She was reared in a house apart : no
man was allowed to see her until she should become Conor's wife.
No one was permitted to enter the house except her tutor, her nurse,
and Lavarcam,1 whom they ventured not to keep out, for she was a
druidess magician whose incantations they feared.
" One winter day Deirdre' s tutor slew a young tender calf upon
the snow outside the house, which he was to cook for his pupil.
She beheld a raven drinking the blood upon the snow. She said to
Lavarcam, ' The only man I could love would be one who should
have those three colours, hair black as the raven, cheeks red as the
blood, body white as the snow.' 'Thou hast an opportunity,'
answered Lavarcam, ' the man whom thou desirest is not far off,
he is close to thee in the palace itself ; he is Naesi, son of Usnach.'
' I shall not be happy,' answered Deirdre, ' until I have seen him.' "
This famous story " which is known," as Dr. Cameron puts
it, "over all the lands of the Gael", both in Ireland and
Scotland,"2 has been more fortunate than any other in the
whole range of Irish literature, for it has engaged the attention
of, and been edited from different texts by, nearly every great
Celtic scholar of this century.3 Yet I luckily discovered last
1 In the older form Leborcham. She is generally described as Conor's
messenger ; in one place she is called his bean-cainte or "talking-woman " ;
this is the only passage I know of in which she is credited with any higher
powers. She is said elsewhere to have been the daughter of two slaves of
Conor's household, Oa or Aue and Adarc.
2 Yet when in Trinity College Dublin, a few years ago, the subject — the
first Irish subject for twenty-seven years — set for the Vice-Chancellor's
Prize in English verse was " Deirdre," it was found that the students did
not know what that word meant, or what Deirdre was, whether animal,
vegetable, or mineral. So true it is that, despite all the efforts of Davis
and his fellows, there are yet two nations in Ireland. Trinity College
might to some extent bridge the gap if she would, but she has carefully
refrained from attempting it.
3 O' Flanagan first printed two versions of it in the solitary volume
which comprises the 4< Transactions of the Gaelic Society," as early as
304 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
year in the museum in Belfast by far the amplest and most
graphic version of them all, bound up with some other pieces
of different dates. It was copied at the end of the last or the
beginning of the present century by a northern scribe, from
a copy which must have been fairly old to judge from the
language and from the glosses in the margin. I give here a
literal translation of the opening of the story from this manu-
script, and it is an admirable example of the later extension anc
embellishment of the ancient texts.
THE OPENING OF THE FATE OF THE SONS OF USNACH,
FROM A MS. IN THE BELFAST MUSEUM.
« Once upon a time Conor, son of Fachtna, and the nobles of the
Red Branch, went to a feast to the house of Feidhlim, the son
1808. The older of these two versions agrees closely with thai -contained
in « E^erton 1782," of the British Museum, but neither of the MSS. which
he ufed is now known to exist. Eugene O' Curry edited the story from
the text in the Yellow Book of Lecan, with a translation in the Atlant s,
a lonf defunct Irish periodical. Windisch edited the oldest existing
version that of the Book of Leinster, in the first volume of « Insche Texte
None of these three versions differ appreciably. In the second volume o
the same Dr. Whitley Stokes edited a consecutive text from 56 and
of the MSS. in the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh, the latter of whic
a vellum of the fifteenth century. Finally, the text of both these MSS.
was published in full in vol. ii. of Dr. Cameron's « Reliquiae Celt,
where he also gives a translation of the first. Keating, too in his history
retefls the story at considerable length. Windisch's, O Curry s and
Organ's texts were reprinted in 1883 in the •• Gaelic Journal/' In
addition to all these Mr. Carmichael published in Gaelic in 1887 an
adm able folk-lore version of the story from the Isles of Scotland in the
thirteenth volume of the " Transactions of the Inverness Gaelic Society
and the tale is retold in English, chiefly from this version, by Mr Jacobs
L the first series of his - Celtic Fairy Tales." M. d'Arbois de Jubamville
has given a French translation of the entire story from the Book of
Le nSer the older Edinburgh MS, and the Highland Folktale, the latter
two being translated by M. Georges Dottin. Macpherson made this story
he foundation of his "Darthula." Dr. Dwyer Joyce published the story m
America as an English poem. Sir Samuel Ferguson, Dr. Todhunter, and
fhTpresent writer have all published adaptations of it in English verse,
andMr Rolkstonmade it the subject of the Prize Cantata at the Feis
CeoiHn Dublin in 1897. Hence I may print here this new and full open-
ing of a piece so celebrated. For text see Zat. /. Celt. Phil. II. i, p. 142.
DEIRDRE 305
Doll, the king's principal story-teller ; and the King and people were
merry and light hearted, eating that feast in the house of the prin-
cipal story-teller, with gentle music of the musicians, and with the
melody of the voices of the bards and the ollavs, with the delight of
the speech and ancient tales of the sages, and of those who read the
keenes (?) (written on) flags and books ; (listening) to the prognosti-
cations of the druids and of those who numbered the moon and
stars. And at the time when the assembly were merry and pleasant
in general it chanced that Feidhlim's wife bore a beautiful, well-
shaped daughter, during the feast. Up rises expeditiously the gentle
Cathfaidh, the Head-druid of Erin, who chanced to be present in the
assembly at that time, and a bundle of his ancient . . . ? fairy books
in his left hand with him, and out he goes on the border of the rath
to minutely observe and closely scrutinise the clouds of the air, the
position of the stars and the age of the moon, to gain a prognos-
tication and a knowledge of the fate that was in store for the child
who was born there. Cathfaidh then returns quickly to all in
presence of the King and told them an omen and prophecy, that
many hurts and losses should come to the province of Ulster on
account of the girl that was born there. On the nobles of Ulster
receiving this prophecy they resolved on the plan of destroying the
infant, and the heroes of the Red Branch bade slay her without
delay.
" ' Let it not be so done,' says the King ; ' it is not laudable to fight
against fate, and woe to him who would destroy an innocent infant,
for agreeable is the appearance and the laugh of the child ; alas ! it
were a pity to quench her (life). Observe, O ye Nobles of Ulster,
and listen to me, O ye valiant heroes of the Red Branch, and under-
stand that I still submit to the omen of the prophecies and fore-
tellings of the seers, but yet I do not submit to, nor do I praise, the
committing of a base deed, or a deed of treachery, in the hope of
quenching the anger of the power of the elements. If it be a fate
which it is not possible to avoid, give ye, each of you, death to
himself, but do not shed the blood of the innocent infant, for it were
not (our) due (to have) prosperity thereafter. I proclaim to you,
moreover, O ye nobles of Emania, that I take the girl under my
own protection from henceforth, and if I and she live and last, it
may be that I shall have her as my one- wife and gentle consort.
Therefore, I assure the men of Erin by the securities of the moon
and sun, that any one who would venture to destroy her either now
or again, shall neither live nor last, if I survive her.'
" The nobles of Ulster, and every one in general listened silent and
mute, until Conall Cearnach, Fergus mac Roigh, and the heroes of
the Red Branch rose up together, and 'twas what they said, ' O High-
er
306 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
king of Ulster, right is thy judgment, and it is (our) due to observe
it, and let it be thy will that is done.'
" As for the girl, Conor took her under his own protection, and
placed her in a moat apart, to be brought up by his nurse, whose
name was Lavarcam, in a fortress of the Red Branch, and Conor
and Cathfaidh the druid gave her the name of Deirdre. Afterwards
Deirdre was being generously nurtured under Lavarcam and (other)
ladies, perfecting her in every science that was fitting for the
daughter of a high prince, until she grew up a blossom-bearing
sapling, and until her beauty was beyond every degree surpassing.
Moreover, she was nurtured with excessive luxury of meat and drink
that her stature and ripeness might be the greater for it, and that
she might be the sooner marriageable. This is how Deirdre's abode
was (situated, namely) in a fortress of the Branch, according to the
King's command, every (aperture for) light closed in the front of the
dun, and the windows of the back (ordered) to be open. A beautiful
orchard full of fruit (lay) at the back of the fort, in which Deirdre
might be walking for a while under the eye of her tutor at the
beginning and the end of the day ; under the shade of the fresh
boughs and branches, and by the side of a running, meandering
stream that was winding softly through the middle of the walled
garden. A high, tremendous difficult wall, not easy to surmount,
(was) surrounding that spacious habitation, and four savage man-
hounds (sent) from Conor (were) on constant guard there, and his
life were in peril for the man who would venture to approach it.
For it was not permitted to any male to come next nor near Deirdre,
nor even to look at her, but (only) to her tutor, whose name was
Cailcin, and to King Conor himself. Prosperous was Conor's sway,
and valiant was the fame (i.e., famous was the valour) of the Red
Branch, defending the province of Ulster against foreigners and
against every other province in Erin in his time, and there were no
three in the household of Emania or throughout all Banba [Ireland]
more brilliant than the sons of Uisneach, nor heroes of higher fame
than they, Naoise [Neesha], Ainle, and Ardan.
" As for Deirdre, when she was fourteen years of age she was
found marriageable and Conor designed to take her to his own royal <
couch. About this time a sadness and a heavy flood of melancholy
lay upon the young queen, without gentle sleep, without sufficient
food, without sprightliness — as had been her wont.
" Until it chanced of a day, while snow lay (on the ground),
in the winter, that Cailcin, Deirdre's tutor, went to kill a
calf to get ready food for her, and after shedding the blood of
the calf out upon the snow, a raven stoops upon it to drink it, and
as Deirdre perceives that, and she watching through a window of
DEIRDRE 307
the fortress, she heaved a heavy sigh so that Cailcin heard her.
' Wherefore thy melancholy, girl ? ' said he. ' Alas that I have not
yon thing as I see it,' said she. 'Thou shalt have that if it be
possible,' said he, drawing his hand dexterously so that he gave an
unerring cast of his knife at the raven, so that he cut one foot off it.
And after that he takes up the bird and throws it over near Deirdrc.
The girl starts at once, and fell into a faint, until Lavarcam came up
to help her. * Why art thou as I see thee, dear girl,' said she, ' for
thy countenance is pitiable ever since yesterday ? ' 'A desire that
came to me,' said Deirdre. ' What is that desire ? ' said Lavarcam.
' Three colours that I saw,' said Deirdre, ' namely, the blackness of
the raven, the redness of the blood, and the whiteness of the snow.'
' It is easy to get that for thee now,' said Lavarcam, and arose (and
went) out without delay, and she gathered the full of a vessel of
snow, and half the full of a cup of the calf's blood, and she pulls
three feathers out of the wing of the raven. And she laid them
down on the table before the girl. Deirdre began as though she
were eating the snow and lazily tasting the blood with the top of the
raven's feather, and her nurse closely scrutinising her, until Deirdre
asked Lavarcam to leave her alone by herself for a while. Lavarcam
departs, and again returns, and this is how she found Deirdre —
shaping a ball of snow in the likeness of a man's head and mottling
it with the top of the raven's feather out of the blood of the calf,
and putting the small black plumage as hair upon it, and she never
perceived her nurse examining her until she had finished. ' Whose
likeness is that ? ' said Lavarcam. Deirdre starts and she said, ' It is
a work easily destroyed.' ' That work is a great wonder to me, girl,'
said Lavarcam, ' because it was not thy wont to draw pictures of a
man, (and) it was not permitted to the women of Emania to teach
thee any similitude but that of Conor only.' ' I saw a face in my
dream,' said Deirdre, 'that was of brighter countenance than the
King's face, or Cailcin's, and it was in it that I saw the three colours
that pained me, namely, the whiteness of the snow on his skin, the
blackness of the raven on his hair, and the redness of the blood
upon his countenance, and oh woe ! my life will not last, unless I
get my desire.' ' Alas for thy desire, my darling,' said Lavarcam.
' My desire, O gentle nurse,' said Deirdre. ' Alas ! 'tis a pity thy
desire, it is difficult to get it,' said Lavarcam, ' for fast and close is
the fortress of the Branch, and high and difficult is the enclosure
round about, and [there is] the sharp watch of the fierce man-
hounds in it.' 'The hounds are no danger to us,' said Deirdre.
' Where did you behold that face ? ' said Lavarcam. ' In a dream
yesterday/ said Deirdre, and she weeping, after hiding her face in
her nurse's bosom, and shedding tears plentifully. ' Rise up from
308 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
me, dear pupil/ said Lavarcam, 'and restrain thy tears henceforth
till thou eatest food and takest a drink, and after Cailcin's eating his
meal we shall talk together about the dream.' Her nurse raises
Deirdre' s head, ' Take courage, daughter,' said she, ' and be patient,
for I am certain that thou shalt get thy desire, for according to
human age and life, Conor's time beside thee is not (to be) long or
lasting.'
" After Lavarcam's departing from her, she [Lavarcam] perceived
a green mantle hung in the front of a closed-up window on the
head of a brass club and the point of a spear thrust through the
wall of the mansion. Lavarcam puts her hand to it so that it readily
came away with her, and stones and moss fell down after it, so that
the light of day, and the grassy lawn, and the Champion's Plain in
front of the mansion, and the heroes at their feats of activity became
visible. ' I understand, now, my pupil,' said Lavarcam, ' that it was
here you saw that dream.' But Deirdre did not answer her. Her
nurse left food and ale on the table before Deirdre, and departed
from her without speaking, for the boring-through of the window
did not please Lavarcam, for fear of Conor or of Cailcin coming to
the knowledge of it. As for Deirdre, she ate not her food, but she
quenched her thirst out of a goblet of ale, and she takes with her
the flesh of the calf, after covering it under a corner of her mantle,
and she went to her tutor and asks leave of him to go out for a while
(and walk) at the back of the mansion. ' The day is cold, and there
is snow darkening in (the air) daughter,' said Cailcin, ' but you can
walk for a while under the shelter of the walls of the mansion, but
mind the house of the hounds.'
" Deirdre went out, and no stop was made by her until she passed
down through the middle of the snow to where the den of the man-
hounds was, and as soon as the hounds recognised her and the smell
of the meat they did not touch her, and they made no barking till
she divided her food amongst them, and she returns into the house
afterwards. Thereupon came Lavarcam, and found Deirdre lying
upon one side of her couch, and she sighing heavily and shedding
tears. Her nurse stood silent for a while observing her, till her heart
was softened to compassion and her anger departed from her. She
stretched out her hand, and 'twas what she said, ' Rise up, modest
daughter, that we may be talking about the dream, and tell me did
you ever see that black hero before yesterday ? ' ' White hero, gentle
nurse, hero of the pleasant crimson cheeks,' said Deirdre. 'Tell
me without falsehood,' said Lavarcam, ' did you ever see that warrior
before yesterday, or before you bored through the window-work
with the head of a spear and with a brass club, and till you looked
out through it on the warriors of the Branch when they were at
DblRDRE 309
their feats of activity on the Champion Plain, and till you saw all the
dreams you spoke of ? ' Deirdre hides her head in her nurse's
bosom, weeping, till she said, ' Oh, gentle mother and nurturer of
my heart, do not tell that to my tutor ; and I shall not conceal from
thee that I saw him on the lawn of Emania, playing games with the
boys, and learning feats of valour, and och ! he had the beautiful
countenance at that time, and very lovely was it yesterday (too).'
' Daughter,' said Lavarcam, ' you did not see the boys on the green
of Emania from the time you were seven years of age, and that is
seven years ago.' ' Seven bitter years,' said Deirdre, ' since I beheld
the delight of the green and the playing of the boys, and surely, too,
Naoise surpassed all the youths of Emania.' 'Naoise, the son of
Uisneach ? ' said Lavarcam. ' Naoise is his name, as he told me,' said
Deirdre, ' but I did not ask whose son he was.' ' As he told you ! ' said
Lavarcam. ' As he told me/ said Deirdre, ' when he made a throw of
a ball, by a miss-cast, backwards transversely over the heads of the
band of maidens that were standing on the edge of the green, and
I rose from amongst them all, till I lifted the ball, and I delivered
it to him, and he pressed my hand joyously.' ' He pressed your hand,
girl!' said Lavarcam. 'He pressed it lovingly, and said that he
would see me again, but it was difficult for him, and I did not see
him since until yesterday, and oh, gentle nurse, if you wish me to
be alive take a message to him from me, and tell him to come to
visit me and talk with me secretly to-night without the knowledge
of Cailcin or any other person.' ' Oh, girl,' said Lavarcam, • it is a
very dangerous attempt to gain the quenching of thy desire [being
in peril] from the anger of the King, and under the sharp watch of
Cailcin, considering the fierceness of the savage man-hounds, and
considering the difficulty of (scaling) the enclosure round about/
' The hounds are no danger to us,' said Deirdre. ' Then, too,' said
Lavarcam, ' great is Conor's love for the children of Uisneach, and
there is not in the Red Branch a hero dearer to him than Naoise.'
' If he be the son of Uisneach,' said Deirdre, ' I heard the report of
him from the women of Emania, and that great are his own terri-
tories in the West of Alba, outside of Conor's sway, and, gentle
nurse, go to find Naoise, and you can tell him how I am, and how
much greater my love for him is than for Conor.' ' Tell him that
yourself if you can,' said Lavarcam, and she went out thereupon to
seek Naoise till he was found, and till he came with her to Deirdre's
dwelling in the beginning of the night, without Cailcin's knowledge.
When Naoise beheld the splendour of the girl's countenance he is
filled with a flood of love, and Deirdre beseeches him to take her and
escape to Alba. But Naoise thought that too hazardous, for fear of
Conor. But in the course (?) of the night Deirdre won him over, so
3io LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
that he consented to her, and they determined to depart on the night
of the morrow.
" Deirdre escaped in the middle of the night without the know-
ledge of her tutor or her nurse, for Naoise came at that time and his
two brothers along with him, so that he bored a gap at the back of
the hounds" den, for the dogs were dead already through poison from
Deirdre.
" They lifted the girl over the walls, through every rough impedi-
ment, so that her mantle and the extremity of her dress were all
tattered, and he set her upon the back of a steed, and no stop was
made by them till (they reached) Sliabh Fuaid and Finn-charn of
the watch, till they came to the harbour and went aboard a ship and
were driven by a south wind across the ocean-waters and over the
back-ridges of the deep sea to Loch n-Eathaigh in the west of
Alba, and thrice fifty valiant champions [sailed] along with them,
namely, fifty with each of the three brothers, Naoise, Ainle, and
Ardan."
The three brothers and Deirdre lived for a long time happily
in Scotland and rose to great favour and power with the King,
until he discovered the existence of the beautiful Deirdre,
whom they had carefully kept concealed lest he should desire
her for his wife. This discovery drives them forth again, and
they live by hunting in the highlands and islands.
It is only at this point that most of the modern copies, such
as that published by O'Flanagan in 1808, begin, namely,
with a feast of King Conor's, in which he asks his household
and all the warriors of Ulster who are present, whether they
are aware of anything lacking to his palace in Emania. They
all reply that to them it seems perfect. "Not so to me,"
answers Conor, " I know of a great want which presseth upon
you, namely, three renowned youths, the three luminaries of
the valour of the Gaels, the three beautiful, noble sons of
Usnach, to be wanting to you on account of any woman in
the world." " Dared we say that," said they, " long since
would we have said it."
Conor thereupon proposes to send ambassadors to them to
solicit their return. He takes Conall Cearnach apart and asks
him if he will go, and what would he do should the sons of
D BIRD RE 311
Usnach be slain while under his protection. Conall answers
that he would slay without mercy any Ultonian who dared to
touch one of them. So does Cuchulain. Fergus mac Roigh
alone promises not to injure the King himself should he touch
them, but any other Ultonian who should wrong them must
die. Fergus and his two sons sailed to Alba, commissioned to
proclaim peace to the sons of Usnach and bring them home.
Having landed, Fergus gives forth the cry of a " mighty man
of chace." Naoise and Deirdre were sitting together in their
hunting booth playing at chess. Naoise heard the cry and said,
"I hear the call of a man of Erin." "That was not the call
of a man of Erin," said D&rdre, " but the call of a man of
Alba." Twice again did Fergus shout, and twice did Deirdre
insist that it was not the cry of a man of Erin. At last Naoise
recognises the voice of Fergus, and sends his brother to meet
him. Then Deirdre confesses that she had recognised the call
of Fergus from the beginning. " Why didst thou conceal it
then, my queen ? " said Naoise. " A vision I had last night,"
said Deirdre, " for three birds came to us from Emania having
three sups of honey in their beaks, and they left them with
us, but they took with them three sups of our blood." " And
how readest thou that, my queen," said Naoise. " It is," said
Deirdre, " the coming of Fergus to us with a peaceful message
from Conor, for honey is not more sweet than the peaceful
message of the false man."
But all is of no avail. Fergus and his sons arrive and spend the
night with the children of Usnach, and despite of all that Deirdre
can do, she sees them slowly win her husband round to their
side, and inspire him with a desire to return once more to Erin.
Next morning they embark. Deirdre weeps and utters
lamentations ; she sings her bitter regret at leaving the scenes
where she had been so happy.
" Delightful land," she sang, " yon eastern land, Alba, with its
wonders. I had never come hither out of it had I not come with
Naoise. .
312 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
" The Vale of Laidh, Oh in the Vale of Laidh, I used to sleep
under soft coverlet ; fish and venison and the fat of the badger were
my repast in the Vale of Laidh.
" The Vale of Masan, oh the Vale of Masan, high its harts-tongue,
fair its stalks, we used to enjoy a rocking sleep above the grassy
verge of Masan.1
" The vale of Eiti, oh the vale of Eiti ! In it I raised my first
house, lovely was its wood (when seen) on rising, the milking-house
of the sun was the vale of Eiti.
" Glendarua, oh Glendarua ! my love to every one who enjoys it ;
sweet the voice of the cuckoo upon bending bough upon the cliff
above Glendarua.
" Dear is Droighin over the strong shore. Dear are its waters
over pure sand ; I would never have come from it had I not come
with my love."
She ceased to sing, the vessel approached the shore, and the
fugitives are landed once more in Erin. But dangers thicken
round them. Through a strategy of King Conor's Fergus is
placed under geasa or tabu by a man called Barach to stay
and partake of a feast with him, and thus detached from the
sons of Usnach, who are left alone with his two sons instead.
Then Deirdre again uses all her influence with her husband
and his brothers to sail to Rathlin and wait there until they
can be rejoined by Fergus, but she does not prevail. After
that she has a terrifying dream, and tells it to them, but
Naoise answered lightly in verse —
" Thy mouth pronounceth not but evil,
O maiden, beautiful, incomparable ;
The venom of thy delicate ruby mouth
Fall on the hateful furious foreigners."
Thereafter, as they advanced farther upon their way towards
King Conor's palace at Emania, the omens of evil grow
Gleann Masain, on Gleann Masain,
Ard a chneamh, geal a ghasain,
Do ghnidhmis codladh corrach
Os inbhear mongach Masain."
D BIRD RE 313
thicker still, and all Deirdre's terrors are re-awakened by the
rising of a blood-red cloud.
" ' O Naoise, view the cloud
That I see here on the sky,
I see over Emania green
A chilling cloud of blood-tinged red.
I have caught alarm from the cloud
I see here in the sky,
It is like a gore-clot of blood,
The cloud terrific very-thin.' "
And she urged them to turn aside to Cuchulain's palace at
Dundalgan, and remain under that hero's safeguard till Fergus
could rejoin them. But she cannot persuade the others that
the treachery which she herself sees so clearly is really intended.
Her last despairing attempt is made as they come in sight of
the royal city ; she tells them that if, when they arrrive, they
are admitted into the mansion in which King Conor is
feasting with the nobles of Ulster round him, they are safe, but
if they are on any pretext quartered by the King in the
House of the Red Branch, they may be certain of treachery.
They are sent to the House of the Red Branch, and not
admitted among the King's revellers, on the pretended grounds
that the Red Branch is better prepared for strangers, and that
its larder and its cellar are better provided with food and drink
than the King's mansion. All now begin to feel that the net
is closing over them. Late in the night King Conor, fired
with drink and jealousy, called for some one to go for him and
bring him word how Deirdre looked, <c for if her own form live
upon her, there is not in the world a woman more beautiful
than she." Lavarcam, the nurse, undertakes to go. She, of
course, discloses to Deirdre and Naoise the treachery that is
being plotted against them, and returning to Conor she tells
him that Deirdre has wholly lost her beauty, whereat, " much
of his jealousy abated, and he continued to indulge in feasting
and enjoyment a long while, until he thought of Ddirdre a
3H LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
second time." This time he does not trust Lavarcam, but
sends one of his retainers, first reminding him that his
father and his three brothers had been slain by Naoise. But
in the mean time the entrances and windows of the Red
Branch had been shut and barred and the doors barricaded by
the sons of Usnach. One small window, however, had been
left open at the back and the spy climbed upon a ladder and
looked through it and saw Naoise and Deirdre sitting together
and playing at chess. Deirdre called Naoise's attention to the
face looking at them, and Naoise, who was lifting a chessman
off the board, hurled it at the head and broke the eye that
looked at them. The man ran back and told the King that
it was worth losing an eye to have beheld a woman so lovely.
Then Conor, fired with fury and jealousy, led his troops to the
assault, and all night long there is fighting and shouting round
the Red Branch House, and Naoise's brothers, helped by the
two sons of Fergus, pass the night in repelling attack, and in
quenching the fires that break out all round the house. At
length one of Fergus's sons is slain and the other is bought off
by a bribe of land and a promise of power from King Conor,
and now the morning begins to dawn, but the sons of Usnach
are still living, and D&rdre is still untaken. At last Conor's
druid, Cathba, consents to work a spell against them it
Conor will plight his faithful word that having once taken
Deirdre he will not touch or harm the sons of Usnach. Conor
plights his word and troth, and the spell is set at work. The
sons of Usnach had left the half-burnt house and were
escaping in the morning light with Deirdre between them
when they met, as they thought, a sea of thick viscid waves,
and they cast down their weapons and spread abroad their arms
and tried to swim, and Conor's soldiers came and took them
without a blow. They were brought to Conor and he caused
them to be at once beheaded. It was then the druid cursed
E mania, for Conor had broken his plighted word, and that
curse was fulfilled in the misery that fell upon the province
D BIRD RE 315
during the wars with Meve. He cursed also the house of
Conor, and prophesied that none of his descendants should
possess Emania for ever, "and that," adds the saga, "has been
verified, for neither Conor nor any of his race possessed Emania
from that time to this." *
As for Deirdre, she was as one distracted ; she fell upon the
ground and drank their blood, she tore her hair and rent her
dishevelled tresses, and the lament she broke forth into has long
been a favourite of Irish scribes. She calls aloud upon the
dead, " the three falcons of the mount of Culan, the three
lions of wood of the cave, the three sons of the breast of the
Ultonians, the three props of the battalion of Chuailgne, the
three dragons of the fort of Monadh."
" The High King of Ulster, my first husband,
I forsook him for the love of Naoise.
• ••••(
That I shall live after Naoise
Let no man on earth imagine.
Their three shields and their three spears
Have often been my bed.
I never was one day alone
Until the day of the making of the grave,
Although both I and ye
Were often in solitude.
My sight has gone from me
At seeing the grave of Naoise."
1 We have seen that none of the race of Ir claim descent from Conor ;
all their great families O'Mores, O'Farrells, etc., descend from Fergus mac
Roigh [Roy] or Conall Cearnach (see p. 69 note) ; yet Conor had twenty-
one sons, all of whom, says Keating, died without issue except three —
" Benna, from whom descended the Benntraidhe ; Lamha, from whom
came the Lamhraidhe ; and Glasni, whose descendants were the Glas-
naide ; but even of these," adds Keating, " there is not at this day a single
descendant alive in Ireland." Sec O'Mahony's translation, p. 278.
3i6 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
She remembers now in her own agony another woman who
would lament with her could she but know that Naoise had
died.
" On a day that the nobles of Alba [Scotland] were feasting,
And the sons of Usnach, deserving of love,
To the daughter of the lord of Duntrone
Naoise gave a secret kiss.
He sent to her a frisking doe,
A deer of the forest with a fawn at its foot,
And he went aside to her on a visit
While returning from the host of Inverness.
But when I heard that
My head filled full of jealousy,
I launched my little skiff upon the waves,
I did not care whether I died or lived.
They followed me, swimming,
Ainnle and Ardan, who never uttered falsehood,
And they turned me in to land again,
Two who would subdue a hundred.
Naoise pledged me his word of truth,
And he swore in presence of his weapons three times,
That he would never cloud my countenance again
Till he should go from me to the army of the dead.
Alas ! if she were to hear this night
That Naoise was under cover in the clay,
She would weep most certainly,
And I, I would weep with her sevenfold." *
After her lay of lamentation she falls into the grave where the
three are being buried, and dies above them. "Their flag
was raised over their tomb, and their names were written in
Ogam, and their funeral games were celebrated. Thus far
the tragedy of the sons of Usnach."
The oldest and briefest version of this fine saga, that pre-
served in the Book of Leinster, ends differently, and even more
* " Och ! da gcluinfeadh sise anocht
Naoise bheith fa bhrat i gcre,
Do ghoilfeadh sise go^beacht,
Acht do ghoilfinn-se fa seacht 16."
D BIRD RE 317
tragically. On the death of Naoise, who is slain the moment
he appears on the lawn of Emania, Deirdre is taken, her
hands are bound behind her back and she is given over to
Conor.
" Deirdre was for a year in Conor's couch, and during that year
she neither smiled nor laughed nor took sufficiency of food, drink,
or sleep, nor did she raise her head from her knee. When they
used to bring the musicians to her house she would utter rhapsody —
" ' Lament ye the mighty warriors
Assassinated in Emania on coming,' etc.
When Conor would be endeavouring to sooth her, it was then she
would utter this dirge —
" ' That which was most beauteous to me beneath the sky,
And which was most lovely to me,
Thou hast taken from me — great the anguish —
I shall not get healed of it to my death,' etc.
" ' What is it you see that you hate most ? ' said Conor.
" ' Thou thyself and Eoghan [Owen] son of Duthrecht,' * said she.
" ' Thou shalt be a year in Owen's couch then,' said Conor. Conor
then gave her over to Owen.
" They drove the next day to the assembly at Muirtheimhne. She
was behind Owen in a chariot. She looked towards the earth that
she might not see her two gallants.
" ' Well, Deirdre/ said Conor, ' it is the glance of a ewe between
two rams you cast between me and Owen.'
" There was a large rock near. She hurled her head at the stone,
so that she broke her skull and was dead.
" This is the exile of the sons of Usnach and the cause of the exile
of Fergus and of the death of Deirdre."
It was in consequence of Conor's treachery in slaying the
sons of Usnach while under Fergus's protection that this
warrior turned against his king, burnt Emania, and then seceded
into Connacht to Oilioll [Ulyul] and Meve, king and queen
of that province, where he took service with about fifteen
hundred Ultonians who, indignant at Conor, seceded along with
him. " It was he," says Keating, summing up the substance of
1 Who had slain Naoise at Conor's bidding, in the older version.
318 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
the sagas, " who carried off the great spoils from Ulster whence
came so many wars and enmities between the people of Con-
nacht and Ulster, so that the exiles who went from Ulster
into banishment with Fergus continued seven, or as some say,
ten years in Connacht, during which time they kept constantly
spoiling, destroying and plundering the Ultonians, on account
of the murder of the sons of Usnach. And the Ultonians in
like manner wreaked vengeance upon them, and upon the
people of Connacht, and made reprisals for the booty which
Fergus had carried off, and for every other evil inflicted upon
them by the exiles and by the Connacht men, insomuch that
the losses and injuries sustained on both sides were so numerous
that whole volumes have been written upon them, which
would be too long to mention or take notice of at present."
It was with the assistance of Fergus and the other exiles
that Meve undertook her famous expedition into Ulster, of
which we must now speak.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE TAIN BO CHUAILGNE
THE greatest of the heroic sagas and the longest is that which
is called the Tain Bo Chuailgne,1 or "Cattle-Raid of Cooley,"
a district of Ulster contained in the present county of Louth,
into which Oilioll and Meadhbh [Meve], the king and queen of
Connacht, led an enormous army composed of men from the
four other provinces, to carry off the celebrated Dun Bull of
Cooley.
Although there is a great deal of verbiage and piling-up of
rather barren names in this piece, nevertheless there are also
several finely conceived and well-executed incidents. The
saga which, according to Zimmer, was probably first committed
to writing in the seventh or eighth century, is partially pre-
served in the Leabhar na h-Uidhre, a manuscript made about
the year uoo, and there is a complete copy of it in the Book
of Leinster made about fifty years later. I have chiefly trans-
lated from a more modern text in my own possession, which
differs very slightly from the ancient ones.
The story opens with a conversation between Meve, queen
of Connacht, and Oilioll her husband, which ends in a dispute
as to which of them is the richest. There was no modern
Married Women's Property Act in force, but Irish ladies
1 Pronounced "Taun Bo Hooiln'ya."
319
320 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
seem to have been at all times much more sympathetically?
treated by the Celtic tribes than by the harder and more stern
races of Teutonic and Northern blood, and Irish damsels seem
to have been free to enjoy their own property and dowries.1
The story, then, begins with this dispute as to which, husband
or wife, is the richer in this world's goods, and the argument
at last becomes so heated that the pair decide to have all their
possessions brought together to compare them one with another
and judge by actual observation which is the most valuable.
They collected accordingly jewels, bracelets, metal, gold, silver,
flocks, herds, ornaments, etc., and found that in point of wealth
they were much the same, but that there was one great bull called
Finn-bheannach or White-horned, who was really calved by one
of Meve's cows, but being endowed with a certain amount of
intelligence considered it disgraceful to be under a woman, and
so had gone over to Oilioll's herds. With him Meve had
nothing that could compare. She made inquiry, however, and
found out from her chief courier that there was in the district
of Cuailgne in Louth (Meve lived at Rathcroghan in Ros-
common) a most celebrated bull called the Dun Bull of Cuailgne
belonging to a chieftain of the name of Dare. To him
accordingly she sends an embassy requesting the loan of the
bull for one year, and promising fifty heifers in return. Dare
was quite willing, and promised to lend the animal. He was
in fact pleased, and treated the embassy generously, giving them
good lodgings with plenty of food and drink — too much drink
in fact. The fate of nations is said to often hang upon a
thread. On this occasion that of Ulster and Connacht de-
pended upon a drop more or less, absorbed by one of the ten
men who constituted Meve's embassy. This man un-
fortunately passed the just limit, and Dare's steward coming in
at the moment heard him say that it was small thanks to his
1 Yet in the Brehon law a woman is valued at only the seventh part
of a man, three cows instead of twenty-one ; but if she is young and hand-
some she has her additional " honour price."
THE TAlN BO CHUAILGNE 321
master to give his bull " for if he hadn't given it we'd have
taken it." That word decided the fate of provinces. The
steward, indignant at such an outrage, ran and told his master,
and Dare swore that now he would lend no bull, and what
was more, but that the ten men were envoys he swore he
would hang them. With indignity they were dismissed, and
returned empty-handed to Meve's boundless indignation. She
in her turn swore she would have the bull in spite of Dare.
She immediately sent out to collect her armies, and invited
Leinster and Munster to join her. She was in fact able
to muster most of the three provinces to march against
Ulster to take the bull from Dare, and in addition she had
Fergus mac Roy and about fifteen hundred Ulster warriors
who had never returned to their homes nor forgiven Conor for
the murder of the sons of Usnach. She crossed the Shannon
at Athlone, and marched on to Kells, within a few miles of
Ulster, and there she pitched her standing camp. She was
accompanied by her husband and her daughter who was the
fairest among women. Her mother had secretly promised her
hand to every leader in her army in order to nerve them to do
their utmost.
At the very beginning Meve is forewarned by a mysterious
female of the slaughter which is to come. She had driven
round in her chariot to visit her druid and to inquire of him
what would come of her expedition, and is returning somewhat
reassured in her mind by the druid's promise which was —
" ' Whosoever returneth or returneth not, thou shalt return,' and,"
says the saga, " as Meve returned again upon her track she beheld a
thing which caused her to wonder, a single woman (riding) beside
her, upon the pole of her chariot. And this is how that maiden was.
She was weaving a border with a sword of bright bronze * in
her right hand with its seven rings of red gold, and, about her, a
spotted speckled mantle of green, and a fastening brooch in the
1 " Findruini." See Book of Leinster, f. 42, for the old text of this, but
I am here using a modern copy, not trusting myself to translate accurately
from the old text.
322 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
mantle over her bosom. A bright red gentle generous countenance,
a grey eye visible in her head, a thin red mouth, young pearly teeth
she had. You would think that her teeth were a shower of white
pearls flung into her head. Her mouth was like fresh coral ? \_par-
laing] . The melodious address of her voice and her speaking tones
were sweeter than the strings of curved harp being played. Brighter
than the snow of one night was the splendour of her skin showing
through her garments, her feet long, fairy-like, with (well) turned
nails. Fair yellow hair very golden on her. Three tresses of her
hair round her head* one tress behind falling after her to the extre
mities of her ankles.
" Meve looks at her. ' What makest thou there, O maiden ? ' said
Meve.
"'Foreseeing thy future for thee, and thy grief, thou who art
gathering the four great provinces of Ireland with thee to the land of
Ulster, to carry out the Tain Bo Chuailgne.'
" ' And wherefore doest thou me this ? " said Meve.
" ' Great reason have I for it/ said the maiden. ' A handmaid of
thy people (am I)/ said she.
" ' Who of my people art thou ?' said Meve.
" ' Feithlinn, fairy-prophetess of Rathcroghan, am I,' said she.
" ' It is well, O Feithlinn, prophetess,' said Meve, ' and how seest
thou our hosts ? '
" ' I see crimson over them, I see red,' said she.
" ' Conor is in his sickness * in Emania,' said Meve, ' and messengers
have reached me from him, and there is nothing that I dread from
the Ultonians, but speak thou the truth, O Feithlinn, prophetess/ said
Meve.
" ' I see crimson, I see red/ said she.
" ' Comhsgraidh Meann ... is in Innis Comhsgraidh in his sick-
ness, and my messengers have reached me, and there is nothing that
I fear from the Ultonians, but speak me truth, O Feithlinn, pro-
phetess, how seest thou our host ? '
" ' I see crimson, I see red.'
" ' Celtchar, son of Uitheachar, is in his sickness/ said Meve, ' and
there is nothing I dread from the Ultonians, but speak truth, O
Feithlinn, prophetess.'
" ' I see crimson, I see red/ said she.
" ' . . . ? ' said Meve, 'for since the men of Erin will be in one place
there will be disputes and fightings and irruptions amongst them,
1 This is the mysterious sickness which seizes upon all the Ultonians at
intervals except Cuchulain. See p. 294, note 3.
THE TAIN BO CHUAILGNE 323
about reaching the beginnings or endings of fords or rivers, and
about the first woundings of boars and stags, of venison, or matter of
venery, speak true, O Feithlinn, prophetess, how seest thou our host ?
said Meve.
" ' I see crimson I see red,' said she."
After this follows a long poem, wherein "she foretold
Cuchulain to the men of Erin."
The march of M eve's army is told with much apparent
exactness. The names of fifty-nine places through which it
passed are given ; and many incidents are recorded, one of
which shows the furious, jealous, and vindictive disposition of
the amazon queen herself. She, who seems to have taken upon
herself the entire charge of the hosting, had made in her chariot
the full round of the army at their encamping for the night, to
see that everything was in order. After that she returned to
her own tent and sat beside her husband Olioill at their meal,
and he asks her how fared the troops. Meve then said something
laudatory about the Gaileoin,1 or ancient Leinstermen, who were
not of Gaelic race, but appear to have belonged to some early
non-Gaelic tribe, cognate with the Firbolg.
" ' What excellence perform they beyond all others that they be
thus praised ? ' said Oilioll.
" ' They give cause for praise,' said Meve, ' for while others were
choosing their camping-ground, they had made their booths and
shelters ; and while others were making their booths and shelters,
they had their feast of meat and ale laid out ; and while others were
laying out their feasts of bread and ale, these had finished their food
and fare ; and while others were finishing their food and fare, these
were asleep. Even as their slaves and servants have excelled the
slaves and servants of the men of Erin, so will their good heroes and
youths excel the good heroes and youths of the men of Erin in this
hosting.'
" ' I am the better pleased at that,' said Oilioll, ' because it was
with me they came, and they are my helpers.' 2
1 For more about the Gaileoin see p. 598 of Rhys's Hibbert Lectures,
and O Curry, " M. and C.," vol. ii. p. 260.
2 They were countrymen of Oilioll's.
324 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
" ' They shall not march with thee, then,' said Meve, ' and it is not
before me, nor to me, they shall be boasted of.'
" ' Then let them remain in camp/ said Oilioll.
" ' They shall not do that either,' said Meve.
" ' What sb>ill they do, then ? ' said Findabar, daughter of Oilioll
and Meve, ' if they shall neither march nor yet remain in camp.'
" ' My will is to inflict death and fate and destruction on them/
said Meve."
It is with the greatest difficulty that Fergus is enabled to
calm the furious queen, and she is only satisfied when the
three thousand Gaileoins have been broken up and scattered
throughout the other battalions, so that no five men of them
remained together.
Thereafter the army came to plains so thickly wooded, in
the neighbourhood of the present Kells, that they were obliged
to cut down the wood with their swords to make a way for
their chariots, and the next night they suffered intolerably
from a fall of snow.
" The snow that fell that night reached to men's legs and to the
wheels of chariots, so that the snow made one plain of the five
provinces of Erin, and the men of Ireland never suffered so much
before in camp, none knew throughout the whole night whether it
was his friend or his enemy who was next him, until the rise early
on the morrow of the clear-shining sun, glancing on the snow that
covered the country."
They are now on the borders of Ulster, and Cuchulain is
hovering on their flank, but no one has yet seen him. He
lops a gnarled tree, writes an Ogam on it, sticks upon it the
heads of three warriors he had slain, and sets it up on the brink
of a ford. That night Oilioll and Meve inquire from the
Ultonians who were in her army more particulars about this
new enemy, and nearly a sixth part of the whole Tain is
taken up by the stories which are then and there related
about Cuchulain's earliest history and exploits, first by
Fergus, and, when he is done relating, by Cormac Conlingeas,
THE TAIN BO CHUAILGNE 325
and when he has finished, by Fiacha, another Ultonian.
This long digression, which is one of the most interesting
parts of the whole saga, being over, we return to the direct
story.
Cuchulain, who knows every tree and every bush of the
country, still hangs upon Meve's flank, and without showing
himself during the day, he slays a hundred men with his sling *
every night.
Meve, through an envoy, asks for a meeting with him, and
is astonished to find him, as she thinks, a mere boy. She offers
him great rewards in the hope of buying him off, but he will
have none of her gold. The only conditions upon which he
will cease his night-slaying is if Meve will promise to let
him fight with some warrior every day at the ford, and will
promise to keep her army in its camp while these single
combats last, and this Meve consents to, since she says it is
better to lose one warrior every day than one hundred every
night.
A great number of single combats then take place, each of
which is described at length. One curious incident is that
of the war-goddess, whom he had previously offended, the
Mor-rigu,2 or "great queen," attacking him while fighting
with the warrior Loich. She came against him, not in her
own figure, but as a great black eel in the water, who wound
itself around his legs, and as he stooped to disengage himself
Loich wounded him severely in the breast. Again she came
against him in the form of a great grey wolf-bitch, and as
Cuchulain turned to drive her off he was again wounded. A
third time she came against him as a heifer with fifty other
heifers round her, but Cuchulain struck her and broke one of
her eyes, just as Diomede in the Iliad wounds the goddess
1 Crann-tabhail ; it is doubtful what kind of missile weapon this really
was. It was certainly of the nature of a sling, but was partly composed
of wood.
3 See above, p. 54 and 291. Rig-it is the old form of rioghan.
326 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
Cypris when she appears against him.1 Cuchulain, thus
embarrassed, only rids himself of Loich by having recourse to
the mysterious feat of the Gae-Bolg, about which we shall
hear more later on. His opponent, feeling himself mortally
hurt, cries out —
" ' By thy love of generosity I crave a boon.'
" ' What boon is that ?' said Cuchulain.
" ' It is not to spare me I ask,' said Loich, ' but let me fall forwards
to the east, and not backward to the west, that none of the men of
Erin may say that I fell in panic or in flight before thee.'
" ' I grant it,' said Cuchulain, ' for surely it is a warrior's request.' "
After this encounter Cuchulain grew terribly despondent,
and urged his charioteer Laeg again to hasten the men of
Ulster to his assistance, but their pains were still upon them,
and he is left alone to bear the brunt of the attack as best he
may. Meve also breaks her compact by sending six men
against him, but them he overcomes, and in revenge begins
again to slay at night.
Thereafter follows the episode known in Irish saga as the
Great Breach of Moy Muirtheimhne. Cuchulain, driven to
despair and enfeebled by wounds, fatigue, and watching, was
in the act of ascending his chariot to advance alone against the
men of the four provinces, moving to certain death, when the
vqXii %a\/c<£»,
or dvaXiciQ tijv Oeof, ovdt Oeduiv
Tdd)v ai r'dvdpwv iroXefiov Kara Koipavzovatv,
OVT' dp' 'A9jjvairj, OVTS. TTToXiiropOog 'Ej/ww.
'AXX ore dfj p' '€/a%aj/e iroXvv Ko.9' ofiiXov
'EvO' £7rop££a^£vo£, fizyaOvfjiov Tv^eof vioQ
"Aicpijv ovrave %£ipa, /i€raX/i€vof 6£si dovpi
eiOap di dopv %po6f avTeroprjaev,
dia TrsirXov, ov oi Xd/oireg Kajuov avrai,
Tlpvfivov vTTtp QkvapoQ' p'se d' dn(3poTov aijjia Ofolo
'I^WjO, oiog Trip re pzei naicdptffai Qtolcriv."
Iliad, v. 330.
A better instance except for the sex is where he afterwards wounds
Ares. (See v. 855.)
THE TAIN BO CHUAILGNE 327
eye of his charioteer is arrested by the figure of a tall stranger
moving through the camp of the enemy, saluting none as he
moved, and by none saluted.
" That man," said Cuchulain, " must be one of my super-
natural friends of the shee * folk, and they salute him not
because he is not seen."
The stranger approaches, and, addressing Cuchulain, desires
him to sleep for three days and three nights, and instantly
Cuchulain fell asleep, for he had been from before the feast
of Samhain till after F&l Bhrighde2 without sleep, "unless
it were that he might sleep a little while beside his spear,
in the middle of the day, his head on his hand, and his hand
on his spear, and his spear on his knee, but all the while
slaughtering, slaying, preying on, and destroying, the four
great provinces."
It was after this long sleep of Cuchulain's that, awaking
fresh and strong, the Berserk rage fell upon him. He hurled
himself against the men of Erin, he drove round their flank,
he u gave his chariot the heavy turn, so that the iron wheels
of the chariot sank into the earth, so that the track of the
iron wheels was (in itself) a sufficient fortification, for like a
fortification the stones and pillars and flags and sands of the
earth rose back high on every side round the wheels." All
that day, refreshed by his three days' sleep, he slaughtered the
men of Erin.
Other single combats take place after this, in one of which
the druid Cailitin and his twenty sons would have slain him
had he not been rescued by his countryman Fiacha, one of
those Ultonians who with Fergus had turned against their king
and country when the children of Usnach were slain.
It was only at the last that his own friend Ferdiad was
despatched against him, through the wiles of Meve. Ferdiad
1 In Irish, sidh. The stranger is really Cuchulain's divine father.
2 This is incredible, for the sickness of the Ultonians could not have
endured so long.
328 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
was not a Gael, but of the Firbolg or Firdomhnan race,1 yet
he proved very nearly a match for Cuchulain. Knowing what
Meve wanted with him, he positively refused to come to her
tent when sent for, and in the end he is only persuaded by her
sending her druids and ollavs against him, who threatened
" to criticise, satirise, and blemish him, so that they would
raise three blisters2 on his face unless he came with them." At
last he went with them in despair, " because he thought it
easier to fall by valour and championship and weapons than to
fall by [druids'] wisdom and by reproach."
The fight with Ferdiad is perhaps the finest episode in the
Tain. The following is a description of the conduct of the
warriors after the first day's conflict.
THE FIGHT AT THE FORD.3
" They ceased fighting and threw their weapons away from them
into the hands of their charioteers. Each of them approached the
other forthwith and each put his hand round the other's neck and
gave him three kisses. Their horses were in the same paddock that
night, and their charioteers at the same fire ; and their charioteers
spread beds of green rushes for them with wounded men's pillows
1 The prominence given to and the laudatory comments on the non-
Gaelic or non-Milesian races, such as the Gaileoins and Firbolg in this
saga is very remarkable. It seems to me a proof of antiquity, because in
later times these races were not prominent.
2 These are the three blisters mentioned in Cormac's Glossary under
the word gaire. Nede satirises — wrongfully — his uncle Caier, king of
Connacht ; " Caier arose next morning early and went to the well. He
put his hand over his countenance, he found on his face three blisters
which the satire had caused, namely, Stain, Blemish, and Defect [on,
anim, eusbaidh'}, to wit, red and green and white."
3 I give here, for the most part, the translation given by Sullivan in his
Addenda to O'Curry's " Manners and Customs," but it is an exceedingly
faulty and defective one from a linguistic point of view. However, even
though some words may be mistranslated or their sense mistaken, it is
immaterial here. Windisch is said to have finished a complete translation
of the Tain, but it has not as yet appeared anywhere. Max Netlau has
studied the texts of the Ferdiad episode in vols. x. and xi. of the " Revue
Celtique."
THE TAIN BO CHUAILGNE 329
to them. The professors of healing and curing came to heal and
cure them, and they applied herbs and plants of healing and curing
to their stabs, and their cuts, and their gashes, and to all their
wounds. Of every herb and of every healing and curing plant that
was put to the stabs and cuts and gashes, and to all the wounds of
Cuchulain, he would send an equal portion from him, westward
over the ford to Ferdiad, so that the men of Erin might not be able
to say, should Ferdiad fall by him, that it was by better means of
cure that he was enabled to kill him.
" Of each kind of food and of palatable pleasant intoxicating
drink that was sent by the men of Erin to Ferdiad, he would send a
fair moiety over the ford northwards to Cuchulain, because the
purveyors of Ferdiad were more numerous than the purveyors of
Cuchulain. All the men of Erin were purveyors to Ferdiad for
beating off Cuchulain from them, but the Bregians only were
purveyors to Cuchulain, and they used to come to converse with
him at dusk every night. They rested there that night."
The narrator goes on to describe the next day's righting,
which was carried on from their chariots " with their great
broad spears," and which left them both in such evil plight
that the professors of healing and curing " could do nothing
more for them, because of the dangerous severity of their
stabs and their cuts and their gashes and their numerous
wounds, than to apply witchcraft and incantations and charms
to them to staunch their blood and their bleeding and their
gory wounds."
Their meeting on the next day follows thus : —
"They arose early the next morning and came forward to the
ford of battle, and Cuchulain perceived an ill-visaged and a greatly
lowering cloud on Ferdiad that day.
" ' Badly dost thou appear to-day, O Ferdiad/ said Cuchulain,
'thy hair has become dark this day and thine eye has become
drowsy, and thine own form and features and appearance have
departed from thee.'
" ' It is not from fear or terror of thee that I am so this day,' said
Ferdiad, ' for there is not in Erin this day a champion that I could
not subdue.'
" And Cuchulain was complaining and bemoaning and he spake
these words, and Ferdiad answered :
330 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
CUCHULAIN.
Oh, Ferdiad, is it thou ?
Wretched man thou art I trow,
By a guileful woman won
To hurt thine old companion.
FERDIAD.
O Cuchulain, fierce of fight,
Man of wounds and man of might,
Fate compelleth each to stir
Moving towards his sepulchre." x
The lay is then given, each of the heroes reciting a verse in
turn, and it is very possibly upon these lays that the prose
narrative is built up. The third day's fighting is then
described in which the warriors use their " heavy hand-
smiting swords," or rather swords that gave "blows of
size. " 2 The story then continues —
"They cast away their weapons from them into the hands of
their charioteers, and though it had been the meeting pleasant and
happy, griefless and spirited of two men that morning, it was the
separation, mournful, sorrowful, dispirited, of the two men that
night.
" Their horses were not in the same enclosure that night. Their
charioteers were not at the same fire. They rested that night
there.
" Then Ferdiad arose early next morning and went forwards alone
to the ford of battle, for knew that that day would decide the battle
and the fight, and he knew that one of them would fall on that day
there or that they both would fall.
" Ferdiad displayed many noble, wonderful, varied feats on high
that day, which he never learned with any other person, neither
with Scathach, nor with Uathach, nor with Aife, but which were
invented by himself that day against Cuchulain.
"Cuchulain came to the ford and he saw the noble, varied,
wonderful, numerous feats which Ferdiad displays on high.
1 This is the metre of the original. The last lines are literally, " A man
is constrained to come unto the sod where his final grave shall be." The
metre of the last line is wrong in the Book of Leinster,
2 Tortbullech = toirt-bhuilleach.
THE TAIN BO CHUAILGNE 331
" ' I perceive these, my friend, Laeg ' [said Cuchulain to his
charioteer], ' the noble, varied, wonderful, numerous feats which
Ferdiad displays on high, and all these feats will be tried on me in
succession, and, therefore, it is that if it be I who shall begin to
yield this day thou art to excite, reproach, and speak evil to me, so
that the ire of my rage and anger shall grow the more on me. If it
be I who prevail, then thou shalt laud me, and praise me, and speak
good words to me that my courage may be greater.' T
" ' It shall so be done indeed, O Cuchulain,' said Laeg.
" And it was then Cuchulain put his battle-suit of conflict and of
combat and of fight on him, and he displayed noble, varied, wonder-
ful, numerous feats on high on that day, that he never learned from
anybody else, neither with Scathach, nor with Uathach, nor with
Aife. Ferdiad saw those feats and he knew they would be plied
against him in succession.
" ' What weapons shall we resort to, O Ferdiad ? ' said Cuchulain.
" ' To thee belongs thy choice of weapons till night,' said Ferdiad.
" ' Let us try the Ford Feat then,' said Cuchulain.
" ' Let us indeed,' said Ferdiad. Although Ferdiad thus spoke his
consent it was a cause of grief to him to speak so, because he knew
that Cuchulain was used to destroy every hero and every champion
who contended with him in the Feat of the Ford.
" Great was the deed, now, that was performed on that day at the
ford — the two heroes, the two warriors, the two champions of
Western Europe, the two gift and present and stipend bestowing
hands of the north-west of the world ; the two beloved pillars of the
valour of the Gaels, and the two keys of the bravery of the Gaels to
be brought to fight from afar through the instigation and inter-
meddling of Oilioll and Meve.
" Each of them began to shoot at other with their missive weapons
from the dawn of early morning till the middle of midday. And
when midday came the ire of the men waxed more furious, and
each of them drew nearer to the other. And then it was that Cuchu-
lain on one occasion sprang from the brink of the ford and came on
the boss of the shield of Ferdiad, son of Daman, for the purpose of
striking his head over the rim of his shield from above. And it was
then that Ferdiad gave the shield a blow of his left elbow and cast
1 A common trait even in the modern Gaelic tales, as in the story of
lollan, son of the king of Spain, whose sweetheart urges him to the battle
by chanting his pedigree ; and in Campbell's story of Conall Gulban,
where the daughter of the King of Lochlann urges her bard to exhort
her champion in the light lest he may be defeated, and to give him
" Brosnachadh file fir-ghlic," i.e., the urging of a truly wise poet.
332 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
Cuchulain from him like a bird on the brink of the ford. Cuchulain
sprang from the brink of the ford again till he came on the boss of
the shield of Ferdiad, son of Daman, for the purpose of striking his
head over the rim of the shield from above. Ferdiad gave the shield
a stroke of his left knee and cast Cuchulain from him like a little
child on the brink of the ford.
" Laeg [his charioteer] perceived that act. ' Alas, indeed/ said
Laeg, ' the warrior who is against thee casts thee away as a lewd
woman would cast her child. He throws thee as foam is thrown by
the river. He grinds thee as a mill would grind fresh malt. He
pierces thee as the felling axe would pierce the oak. He binds thee
as the woodbine binds the tree. He darts on thee as the hawk darts
on small birds, so that henceforth thou hast nor call nor right nor
claim to valour or bravery to the end of time and life, thou little
fairy phantom/ said Laeg.
" Then up sprang Cuchulain with the rapidity of the wind and with
the readiness of the swallow, and with the fierceness of the dragon
and the strength of the lion into the troubled clouds of the air the
third time, and he alighted on the boss of the shield of Ferdiad, son
of Daman to endeavour to strike his head over the rim of his shield
from above. And then it was the warrior gave the shield a shake,
and cast Cuchulain from him into the middle of the ford, the same
as if he had never been cast off at all.
" And it was then that Cuchulain's first distortion came on, and he
was filled with swelling and great fulness, like breath in a bladder,
until he became a terrible, fearful, many-coloured, wonderful Tuaig,
and he became as big as a Fomor, or a man of the sea, the great and
valiant champion, in perfect height over Ferdiad.1
" So close was the fight they made now that their heads met above
and their feet below and their arms in the middle over the rims and
bosses of their shields. So close was the fight they made that they
cleft and loosened their shields from their rims to their centres. So
close was the fight which they made that they turned and bent and
shivered their spears from their points to their hafts. Such was the
closeness of the fight which they made that the Bocanachs and
Bananachs, and wild people of the glens, and demons of the air
screamed from the rims of their shields and from the hilts of their
swords and from the hafts of their spears. Such was the closeness of
the fight which they made that they cast the river out of its bed and
out of its course, so that it might have been a reclining and reposing
couch for a king or for a queen in the middle of the ford, so that
1 Compare this with the Berserker rage of the Northmen.
THE TAIN BO CHUAILGNE 333
there was not a drop of water * in it unless it dropped into it by the
trampling and the hewing which the two champions and the two
heroes made in the middle of the ford. Such was the intensity of
the fight which they made that the stud of the Gaels darted away in
fright and shyness, with fury and madness, breaking their chains and
their yokes, their ropes and their traces, and that the women and
youths, and small people, and camp followers, and non-combatants of
the men of Erin broke out of tue camp south-westwards.
" They were at the edge-feat of swords during the time. And it
was then that Ferdiad found an unguarded moment upon Cuchulain,
and he gave him a stroke of the straight-edged sword, and buried it
in his body until his blood fell into his girdle, until the ford became
reddened with the gore from the body of the battle- warrior.
Cuchulain would not endure this, for Ferdiad continued his
unguarded stout strokes, and his quick strokes and his tremendous
great blows at him. And he asked Laeg, son of Riangabhra, for the
Gae Bulg. The manner of that was this : it used to be set down the
stream and cast from between the toes [lit. in the cleft of the foot],
it made the wound of one spear in entering the body, but it had
thirty barbs to open, and could not be drawn out of a person's
body until it was cut open. And when Ferdiad heard the Gae Bulg
mentioned he made a stroke of the shield down to protect his lower
body. Cuchulain thrust the unerring thorny spear off the centre of
his palm over the rim of the shield, and through the breast of the
skin-protecting armour, so that its further half was visible after
piercing his heart in his body. Ferdiad gave a stroke of his shield
up to protect the upper part of his body, though it was ' the relief
after the danger.' The servant set the Gae Bulg down the stream
and Cuchulain caught it between the toes of his foot, and he threw
an unerring cast of it at Ferdiad till it passed through the firm deep
iron waistpiece of wrought iron and broke the great stone which
was as large as a millstone in three, and passed through the protec-
tions of his body into him, so that every crevice and every cavity of
him was filled with its barbs.
"'That is enough now, indeed,' said Ferdiad, 'I fall of that.
Now indeed may I say that I am sickly after thee, and not by thy
hand should I have fallen,' and he said [here follow some verses] ....
" Cuchulain ran towards him after that, and clasped his two arms
about him and lifted him with his arms and his armour and his
clothes across the ford northward, in order that the slain should lie
1 Cf. the common Gaelic folk-lore formula, " they would make soft of
the hard and hard of the soft, and bring cold springs of fresh water out of
the hard rock with their wrestling."
334 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
by the ford on the north, and not by the ford on the west with the
men of Erin.
" Cuchulain laid Ferdiad down there, and a trance and a faint and
a weakness fell then on Cuchulain over Ferdiad.
" ' Good, O Cuchulain,' said Laeg, ' rise up now for the men of
Erin are coming upon us, and it is not single combat they will give
thee since Ferdiad, son of Daman, son of Dare, has fallen by thee.'
" ' Servant/ said he, ' what availeth me to arise after him that hath
fallen by me.' "
Cuchulain is carried away swooning after this fight and is
brought by the two sons of Geadh to the streams and rivers to
be cured of his stabs and wounds, by plunging him in the
waters and facing him against the currents, " for the Tuatha
De Danann sent plants of grace and herbs of healing (floating)
down the streams and rivers of Muirtheimhne, to comfort and
help Cuchulain, so that the streams were speckled and green
overhead with them." The Finglas, the Bush, the Douglas,
and eighteen other rivers are mentioned as aiding to cure
him.
During the period of Cuchulain's leeching many events were
happening in Meve's camp, amongst others the tragic death of
her beautiful daughter, Finnabra.1 Isolated bands of the men
of Ulster were now beginning to at last muster in front of
Meve, and amongst them came a certain northern chief, who
was, as her daughter secretly confessed to Meve, her own love
and sweetheart beyond all the men of Erin.
The prudent Meve immediately desires her to go to him, if
he is her lover, and do everything in her power to make him
draw off his warriors. This design, however, got abroad, and
came to the ears of the twelve Munster princes who led the
forces of the southern province in Meve's army. These
gradually make the discovery that the astute queen had
secretly promised her daughter's hand to each one of the
twelve, as an inducement to him to take part in her expedition.
Infuriated at being thus trifled with and at Meve's treachery
1 Or Findabar, the fair-eyebrowed one.
THE TAIN BO CHUAILGNE 335
in now sending her daughter to the Ultonian, they fall with
all their forces upon the queen's battalion and the whole camp
becomes a scene of blood and confusion. The warrior Fergus
at last succeeds in separating the combatants, not before seven
hundred men have fallen. But when Finnabra saw the
slaughter that was raging, of which she herself was cause,
"a blood-torrent burst from her heart in her bosom through
(mingled) shame and generosity," and she was taken up dead.
In the meantime Cuchulain is joined by another great
Ultonian warrior, who is also being leeched. He had fallen
upon the men of Erin single-handed, and received many
wounds, one from Meve herself, who fought, like Boadicea,
at the head of her troops. He describes the amazon who
wounded him to Cuchulain —
"A largely-nurtured, white-faced, long-cheeked woman, with a
yellow mane on the top of her two shoulders, with a shirt of royal
silk over her white skin, and a speckled spear red-flaming in her
hand ; it was she who gave me this wound, and I gave her another
small wound in exchange.
" ' I know that woman,' said Cuchulain, ' that woman was Meve,
and it had been glory and exultation to her had you fallen by her
hand.' "
Afterwards Sualtach, father of Cuchulain, heard the groans
of his son as he was being cured, and said, " Is it heaven that
is bursting, or the sea that is retiring, or the land that is
loosening, or is it the groan of my son in his extremity that I
hear ? " said he. Cuchulain despatches him to urge the
Ultonians to his assistance. " Tell them how you found me,"
he said ; " there is not the place of the point of a needle in
me from head to foot without a wound, there is not a hair
upon my body without a dew of crimson blood upon the top
of every point, except my left hand alone that was holding my
shield.""
And now the Ultonians begin to rally and face the men of
Erin. Troops are seen to pour in from every quarter of
336 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
Ulster, gathering upon the plains of Meath for the great battle
that was impending. Meve sends out her trusted messenger
to bring word of what is going on amongst the hostile bands.
His first report is that the noise of the Ultonians hewing down
the woods before their chariots with the edge of their swords
was cc like nothing but as it were the solid firmament falling
upon the surface-face of the earth, or as it were the sky-blue
sea pouring over the superficies of the plain, as it were the
earth being rent asunder, or the forests falling [each tree] into
the grasp and fork of the other."
Mac Roth, the chief messenger, is again sent out to observe
the gathering of the hosts and to bring word of what bands are
coming in to the hill where Conor, king of Ulster, has set up
his standard. On his return at nightfall there follows a long,
minute, and tedious account, something like the list of ships in
the Iliad, only broken by the questions of Meve and Oilioll,
and the answers of Fergus. It contains, however, some pas-
sages of interest. The scout describes the arrival of twenty-
nine different armaments around their respective chiefs at the
hill where King Conor is encamping. Incidentally he gives
us descriptions of characters of interest in the Saga-cycle. As
he ends his description of each band and its leaders, Oilioll
turns to Fergus, and Fergus from Mac Roth's description
recognises and tells him who the various leaders are. In this
way we get a glimpse at Sencha, the wise man, the Nestor of
the Red Branch, whose counsel was ever good. " That man,"
said Fergus, " is the speaker and peace-maker of the host of
Ulster, and I pledge my word that it is no cowardly or
unheroic counsel which that man will give to his lord this day,
but counsel of vigour and valour and fight." We see the
arrival of Feirceirtne, the arch-ollav of the Ultonians, of
Cathbadh the Druid, he who had prophesied of D6irdre at her
birth, who was supposed, according to the earliest accounts, to
have been the real father of King Conor, he who weakened
the children of Usnach by his spells ; and we see also Aithirne,
THE TAIN BO CHUAILGNE 337
the infamous and overbearing poet of the Ultonians, about
whom much is related in other tales. " The lakes and rivers,"
said Fergus, " recede before him when he satirises them, and
rise up before him when he praises them." " There are not
many men in life more handsome or more golden-locked than
he," said Mac Roth, "he bears a gleaming ivory [-hiked]
sword in his right hand." With this sword he amuses him-
self, something like the Norman trouvere Taillefer at the battle
of Hastings, by casting it aloft and letting it fall almost on the
heads of his companions but without hurting them. The
arch-druid is described as having scattered whitish-grey hair,
and wearing a purple-blue mantle with a large gleaming
shield and bosses of red brass, and a long iron sword of foreign
look. Conor's leech, Finghin, led a band of physicians to the
field ; " that man could tell," said Fergus, " what a person's
sickness is by looking at the smoke of the house in which he
is." Another hero whom we catch a glimpse of is the mighty
Conall Cearnach, the greatest champion of the north, whose
name was till lately a household word around Dunsevrick, he
who afterwards so bloodily avenged Cuchulain's death, " the
sea over seas, the bursting rock, the furious troubler of hosts,"
as Fergus calls him.
We also see the youth Ere, son of Cairbre Niafer the
High-king, who comes from Tara to assist his grandfather
King Conor. It is curious, however, that in this catalogue
of the Ultonians quite as much space is given to the description
of men whose names are now — so far, at least, as I know —
unknown to us, as to those who often and prominently figure
in our yet remaining stories.
At last the great battle of the Tain comes off, when the men
of Ulster meet the men of Ireland fairly and face to face.
Prodigies of valour are performed on both sides, and Fergus —
who after Cuchulain is certainly the hero of the Tain —
seconded by Oilioll, by Meve, by the Seven Maines, and by
the sons of Magach, drives the Ultonians back on his side of
I
338 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
the battle three times. Conor, who is on the other flank,
perceives that the men of his far wing are being broken, and
loudly
" he shouts to the Household of the Red Branch, ' hold ye the place
in the battle where I am, till I go find who it is who has thrice
inclined the battle against us on the north.'
" ' We take that upon ourselves/ said they, ' for heaven is over us,
and earth is under us, and unless the firmament fall down upon the
wave-face of the earth, or the ocean encircle us, or the ground give
way under us, or the ridgy blue-bordered sea rise over the expanse *
of life, we shall give not one inch of ground before the men of Erin
till thou come to us again, or till we be slain/ "
Conor hastens northward and finds himself confronted by
the man he had so bitterly wronged, whose hand had lain
heavy on his province and himself, Fergus, who now comes
face to face with him after so many years. Tremendous are
the strokes of Fergus.
"He smote his three enemy blows upon Conor's shield ' Eochain'
so that the shield screamed thrice upon him, and the three leading
waves of Erin answered it.
" ' Who,' cries Fergus, ' holds his shield against me in this battle ? ' 2
" ' O Fergus/ cried Conor, ' one who is greater and younger and
handsomer, and more perfect than thyself is here, and whose father
and whose mother were better than thine ; one who slew the three
great candles of the valour of the Gaels, the three prosperous sons
of Usnach, in spite of thy guarantee and thy protection, the man
who banished thee out of thy own land and country, the man who
made of it a dwelling-place for the deer and the roe and the foxes,
the man who never left thee as much as the breadth of thy foot of
territory in Ulster, the man who drove thee to the entertainment of
women,3 and the man who will drive thee back this day in the
presence of the men of Erin, [I] Conor, son of Fachtna Fathach,
High-king of Ulster, and son of the High-king of Ireland."
Despite this boasting he would certainly have been slain by
his great opponent had not one of his sons clasped his arms in
r " Tulmuing." See p. 7.
2 I do not think this is rightly translated, but the passage is obscure to me.
3 Alluding to Fergus serving with Queen Meve,
THE TAIN BO CHUAILGNE 339
supplication around Fergus's knees and conjured him not to
destroy Ulster, and Fergus, melted by these entreaties, con-
sented to remain passive if Conor retired to the other wing of
the battle, which he did.
In the meantime Meve had sent away the Dun Bull with
fifty heifers round him and eight men, to drive him to her
palace in Connacht, " so that whoever reached Cruachan
alive, or did not reach it, the Dun Bull of Cuailgne should
reach it as she had promised."
Cuchulain, who had joined the Ultonians, and whose arms
had been taken from him, lest in his enfeebled condition he
should injure himself by taking part in the fray, unable to
bear any longer the look of the battle, the shouting and the
war-cries, rushes into the fight with part of his broken chariot
for a weapon, and performs mighty feats. At length he ceases
to slay at Meve's solicitation, whose life he spares, and the
shattered remnants of her host begin slowly to withdraw
across the ford. " Oilioll draws his shield of protection behind
the host [/.£., covers the rear], Meve draws her shield of
protection in her own place, Fergus draws his shield of pro-
tection, the Maines draw their shield of protection, the sons
of Magach draw their shield of protection behind the host ;
and in this manner they brought with them the men of Erin
across the great ford westward," nor did they cease their retreat
till Meve and her army found themselves at Cruachan in
Connacht, whence they had set out.
The long saga ends with a decided anti-climax, the encounter
between the Dun Bull, whom Meve had carried oflF, and her
own bull, the White-Horned.1 These bulls, according to one
1 The Finnbheannach, pronounced " Fin-van-ach." Both the bulls were
endowed with intelligence. One of the virtues of the Dun Bull was that
neither Bocanachs nor Bananachs nor demons of the glens could come
into one cantred to him. There emanated from him, too, when returning
home every evening, a mysterious music, so that the men of the cantred
where he was, required no other music. The war-goddess herself, the
Mor-rigu, speaks to him.
340 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
of the most curious of the short auxiliary sagas to the Tain,
were really rebirths of two men who hated each other during
life, and now fought it out in the form of bulls. When they
caught sight of each other they pawed the earth so furiously
that they sent the sods flying across their shoulders, "they
rolled the eyes in their heads like flames of fiery lightning."
All day long they charged, and thrust, and struggled, and
bellowed, while the men of Ireland looked on, " but when the
night came they could do nothing but be listening to the noises
and the sounds." The two bulls traversed much of Ireland
during that night.1 Next morning the people of Cruachan
saw the Dun Bull coming with the remains of his enemy upon
his horns. The men of Connacht would have intercepted
him, but Fergus, ever generous, swore with a great oath that
all that had been done in the pursuit of the Tain was nothing
to what he would do if the Dun Bull were not allowed to
return to his own country with his kill. The Dun made
straight for his home at Cuailgne in Louth. He drank of the
Shannon at Athlone, and as he stooped one of his enemy's loins
fell off from his horn, hence Ath-luain, the Ford of the Loin.
After that he rushed, mad with passion, towards his home,
killing every one who crossed his way. Arrived there, he set
his back to a hill and uttered wild bellowings of triumph,
until " his heart in his breast burst, and he poured his heart in
black mountains of brown blood out across his mouth."
Thus far the Tain Bo Chuailgne.
1 Every place in Ireland, says the saga, that is called Cluain-na-dtarbh,
Magh-na-dtarbh, Bearna-na-dtarbh, Druim-na-dtarbh, Loch-na-dtarbh, i.e.,
the Bull's meadow, plain, gap, ridge, lake, etc., has its name from them !
CHAPTER XXVII
THE DEATH OF CUCHULAIN
ALTHOUGH Cuchulain won for himself in this war an imperish-
able fame, yet he was not destined to enjoy it long, for he
perished before arriving at middle age.1 The account of his
death is preserved in the Book of Leinster, a manuscript of
the middle of the twelfth century, which quotes incidentally
from an Irish poet 2 of the seventh century, thus showing that
Cuchulain was at this early age the hero of the poets. Un-
fortunately the opening of the story in the Book of Leinster
is lost, but many modern extensions of the saga still exist, from
one of which in my possession I shall supply what is missing.3
Cuchulain had three formidable enemies, who were bent
upon his life, these were Lughaidh [Lewy] the son of the
1 He died at the age of twenty-seven years, according to the Annals of
Tighearnach, and also according to a note in the Book of Ballymote,
which Charles O'Conor of Belinagare identifies as an extract from the
Synchronisms of Flann of Monasterboice, who died in 1056. But an
account in a MS. H. 3. 17, in Trinity College, Dublin, which was copied
)ut the year 1460, asserts that Cuchulain died in his fifty-ninth year.
>ee O'Curry's MS. Mat., p. 507.)
Cennfaelad, son of Ailill.
3 This MS., which contains many of the Cuchulain sagas, was copied
)ut a hundred years ago by a scribe named Seaghain O'Mathghamhna
an island in the Shannon,
342 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
Momonian king Curigh,1 whom Cuchulain had slain, Ere, the
son of Cairbre Niafer king of all Ireland, who was slain in
the battle of Rosnaree,2 and the descendants of the wizard
Calatin, who with his twenty sons and his son-in-law fell by
Cuchulain in one of the combats at the Ford, during the raid of
the Tain. His wife, however, brought into the world three
posthumous children, daughters.3 These unhappy creatures
Meve mutilated by cutting off their right legs and left arms,
so that they might be odious and horrible, and all the fitter
for the dread profession she proposed for them — evil wizardry.
She reared them carefully, and so soon as they were of a
fitting age she sent them into the world to gain a knowledge
of charms and spells, and druidism, and witchcraft, and incanta-
tions. In pursuit of this knowledge they roamed throughout
the world, and at last returned to the queen as perfect adepts
as might be.
Thereupon she convened a second muster of the men of the
four provinces, and joined by Lewy the son of Curigh, and
Ere the son of Cairbre Niafer, both of whose parents had
fallen by Cuchulain, and having with her the odious but
powerful children of Calatin, eager to avenge the death of
their father and their family, she again marched upon Ulster
1 The older form of this name is Curoi. A detailed account of this saga
is given by Keating. See p. 282 of O'Mahony's edition. The saga is
also told under the title of Aided Conrut, in Egerton 88, British Museum.
2 The saga of the battle of Rosnaree has recently been published with a
translation by Rev. Ed. Hogan, SJ.
3 Some say six children — three daughters and three sons. The MS.
H. i. 8, in Trinity College, which dates from about 1460, according to
O'Curry, relates thus : " And the sons of Cailitin were eight years after
the Tain before they went to pursue their learning, for they were but
infants in cradles at the time their father was killed. Nine years for them
after that pursuing their learning. Seven years after finishing their
learning was spent in making their weapons, because there could be
found but one day in the year to make their spears. And three years
after that did the sons of Cailitin spend in assembling and marching
the men of Erin to Belach Mic Uilc in Magh Muirtheimhne (Cuchulain 's
patrimony)."
THE DEATH OF CUCHULAIN 343
during the sickness of their warriors, and began to plunder
and to burn and to drive away a mighty prey. King Conor
immediately surmised that it was against Cuchulain the
expedition was prepared, and without a moment's delay he
depatched Lavarcam his female messenger, to desire him
instantly to leave his palace and his patrimony at Dundealgan *
in the plain of Muirtheimhne, and come to himself at Emania,
there to be under the King's immediate orders. This command
he gave, thinking to rescue Cuchulain from the possible effects
of his own valour and rashness, for there was scarcely a man
of distinction in any of the four provinces of Erin some of
whose relatives had not been slain by him.
Lavarcam found the hero upon the shore, between sea and
land, intent upon the slaying of sea-fowl with his sling, but
though birds many flew over him and past him, not one could
he bring down — they all escaped him. And this was to him
the first bad omen. Very reluctantly did he obey the call of
Conor, and sorely loath was he to leave his patrimony. He
accompanied Lavarcam, however, to Emania, and abode there
in his own bright-lighted crystal grianan. Then Conor con-
sulted with his druids as to how best to keep him there, and
they sent the bright ladies of Emania, and his wife Emer, and
the poets and the musicians, and the men of science, to sur-
round and distract and amuse him, with conversation and
music and banquets.
In the meantime, however, Meve's army had advanced upon
and burned Dundealgan, and the children of Calatin had
promised that within three days and three nights they would
bring Cuchulain to his doom.
And now ensues what is to my mind one of the most
powerful incidents in all this saga — the malignant ghoulish
efforts of the children of Calatin to draw forth Cuchulain
from his place of safety, and on the other side the anxiety of
the druids and ladies, and the frenzied heart-sick efforts of his
1 Now Dundalk in the County Louth.
344 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
wife, and his mistress, to detain him. The loathsome wizards
flew through the air and stationed themselves upon the plain
outside Emania —
"They smote the soil and beat and tore it up around them, so that
they made of fuz-balls, and of stalks of sanna, and of the fine foliage
of the oaks, as it were ordered battalions, and hosts, and multitudes
of men, and the confused shoutings of the battalions and of the war-
bands, and the battle array, were heard on all sides, as it were
striking and attacking the fortress."
Geanan the druid, the son of old Cathbadh, was watching
Cuchulain this day. As soon as the sounds of war and shout-
ing reached him Cuchulain rose and "looked forth, and he saw
the battalions smiting each other unsparingly," as he thought,
and he burned at once with fury and shame ; but the druid
cast his two arms round him in time to prevent him from
bursting forth to relieve the apparently foe-beleaguered town.
Over and over again must the druid assure him that all he saw
was blind-work and magic, and unreal phantoms, employed by
the clan Calatin to lure him forth to his destruction.1 It was
impossible, however, to keep Cuchulain from at least looking,
and, the next time he looked forth,
" he thought he beheld the battalions drawn up upon the plains,
and the next time he looked after that he thought he saw Gradh
son of Lir upon the plain, and it was a gets (tabu) to him to see that,
and then he thought moreover that he heard the harp of the son of
Mangur playing musically, ever-sweetly, and it was a gets to him to
listen to those pleasing fairy sounds, and he recognised from these
things that his virtue was indeed overcome, and that his geasa
(tabus) were broken, and that the end of his career had arrived,
and that his valour and prowess were destroyed by the children of
Calatin."
After that one of the daughters of the wizard Calatin,
1 " Ni bhfuil acht saobh-lucht siabhartha arm sud, sian-sgarrtha duaibh-
siocha draoidheachta do dhealbhadar clann cuirpthe Chailitin go claon-
mhillteach fad' chomhair-se, dod' chealgadh, agus dod' chomh-bhuaidh-
readh, a churaidh chalma chath-bhuadhaigh."
THE DEATH OF CUCHULAIN 345
assuming the form of a crow, came flying over him and
incited him with taunts to go and rescue his homestead and
his patrimony from the hands of his enemies. And although
Cuchulain now understood that these were enchantments that
were working against him, yet was he none the less anxious
to rush forth and oppose them, for he felt moved and troubled
in himself at the shouting of the imaginary hosts, and his
memory, and his senses, and his right mind were afflicted by
the sounds of that ever-thrilling harp.
Then the druid used all his influence, explaining to him
that if he would only remain for three days more in E mania
the spells would have no power, and he would go forth again,
" and the whole world would be full of his victories and his
lasting renown," and thereafter the ladies of Emania and the
musicians closed round him, and they sang sweet melodies,
and they distracted his mind, and the day drew to a close : —
the clan Calatin retired baffled, and Cuchulain was himself
once more.
During that night the ladies and the druids took council
together and determined to carry him away to a glen so remote
and lonely that it was called the Deaf Valley, and to hide him
there, preparing for him a splendid banquet, with music, and
poets, and delights of every kind.
Next morning came the accursed wizards and inspected the
city, and they marvelled that they saw not Cuchulain, and
that he was neither beside his wife, nor yet amongst the other
heroes of the Red Branch. Then they understood that he
had been hidden away by Cathbadh the druid, "and they
raised themselves aloft, lightly and airily, upon a blast of
enchanted wind, which they created to lift them," and went
soaring over the entire province of Ulster to discover his
retreat. This they do by perceiving Cuchulain's grey steed,
the Liath Macha, standing outside at the entrance to the
glen. Then the three begin their wizardry anew, and made,
as it were, battalions of warriors to appear round the glen,
346 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
and they raised anew the sounds of arms and the shouts of war
and conflict, as they had done at Emania.
The instant the ladies round Cuchulain heard it they also
shouted, and the musicians struck up — but in vain ; Cuchulain
had caught the sound. They succeeded, however, in calming
his mind, and in inducing him to pay no heed to the false
witcheries of the clan Calatin. These continued for a long
time waiting and filling the air with their unreal battle tumult,
but Cuchulain did not appear. Then they understood that
the druids had been more powerful than they. Mad with
impotent fury one of them enters the glen, and pushes her way
right into the very fortress where Cuchulain was feasting.
Once there she changes herself into the form of the beautiful
Niamh [Nee-av], Cuchulain's love and sweetheart. First she
stood at the door in the likeness of an attendant damsel, and
beckoned to the lady to come to her outside. Niamh, think-
ing she has something to communicate, follows her through
the door and out into the valley, and the other ladies follow
Niamh. Instantly she raises an enchanted fog between them
and the dun, so that they wander astray, and their minds are
troubled. But she, assuming the form of the lady Niamh her-
self, slips back into the fortress, comes to Cuchulain, and cries
to him : " Up, O Cuchulain, and meet the men of Erin, or
thy fame shall be lost for ever, and the province shall be
destroyed." At this speech Cuchulain is astounded, for Niamh
had bound him by an oath that he would not go forth or take
arms until she herself should give him leave, and this leave he
never thought to receive or her until the fatal time was over.
" I shall go," said Cuchulain, "and that is a pity, O Niamh,"
said he, " and after that it is difficult to trust to woman, for
I had thought thou hadst not given me that leave for the gold
of the world, but since it is thou who dost let me go to face
the men of Erin, I shall go." After that he rose and left the
dun. " I have no reason for preserving my life longer," said
Cuchulain, " for the end of my time is come, and all my
THE DEATH OF CUCHULAIN 347
geasa (tabus) are lost, and Niamh has let me go to face the
men of Erin ; and since she has let me, I shall go."
Afterwards the real Niamh overtakes him at the entrance to
the glen, and assured him with torrents of tears, and wild sobs,
that it was not she who had given him leave, but the vile
enchantress who had assumed her form, and she conjured him
with prayers and piteous entreaties to remain with her. But
Cuchulain would not believe her, and urged Laeg to catch his
steeds and yoke them, for he thought that he beheld —
"The great battle-battalions ranged upon the green of Emania,
and the whole plain filled up and crowded with broad bands of
hundreds of men, with champions, and steeds, and arms, and
armour, and he thought he heard the awful shoutings, and [saw]
the burnings extending, widely-let-loose through the buildings
of Conor's city, and him-seemed that there was nor hill nor
rising ground about Emania that was not full of spoils, and it
appeared to him that Emer's sunny-house was overthrown and had
fallen out over the ramparts of Emania, and that the House of the
Red Branch was in one blaze, and that all Emania was one meeting-
place of fire, and of black, dark, spacious, brown-red smoke." x
Then Cuchulain's brooch fell from his hand and pierced his
foot, another omen of ill. Nor would his noble grey war-horse
allow himself to be caught. It was only when Cuchulain
addressed him with persuasive words of verse that he consented
to let himself be harnessed to the chariot, and even then " he
1 Up to this I have followed the version of my own modern manuscript.
From this out, however, the version in the twelfth-century Book of Leinster
is used. Monsieur d' Arbois de Jubainville, in his introduction to the fragment
of the saga in the Book of Leinster, seems to think that Emania was really
besieged, and women and children slaughtered round its walls by the
men of Erin, whereas it would appear that the lost part of the saga refers
to some such version as I have given from my manuscript, and that it was
only the wizardry and sorcery of the children of Calatin, who raised these
phantasms. This is the more evident because Cuchulain, when he issues
forth, meets no enemy until he has arrived at the plain of Muirtheimhne.
Jubainville's words are, " Cependant les cris de douleur des femmes et
des enfants qu'on massacrait jusqu'au pied des remparts d'Emain macha
[Emania] parvinrent a son oreille : on en verra un peu plus bas les conse-
quences, dont la derniere fut la mort du heros."
348 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
lets fall upon his fore feet, from his eyes, two large tears of
blood." In vain did the ladies of Emania try to bar his
passage, in vain did fifty queens uncover their bosoms before
him in supplication. " He is the first," says the saga, " of
whom it is recounted that women uncovered before him their
bosoms." J
Thereafter another evil omen overtook him, for as he pursued
the high road leading to the south,
" and had passed the plain of Mogna, he perceived something, three
hags of the half -blind race,2 who were on the track before him cook-
ing a poisoned dog's flesh upon spits of holly. Now it was a gets
(tabu) to Cuchulain to pass a cooking-fire without visiting it and
accepting food. It was another geis to eat of his own name " [i.e., a
hound, he is Cu-Chulain or Culan's hound], "so he pauses not, but
passes the three hags. Then one of them cries to him —
" ' Come, visit us, Cuchulain.'
" ' I shall not visit you,' said Cuchulain.
" ' There is something to eat here/ replied the hag ; ' we have a
dog to offer thee. If our cooking-place were great,' said she, ' thou
wouldst come, but because it is small thou comest not ; a great man
who despises the small, deserves no honour.'
"Cuchulain then moved over to the hag, and she with her left
hand offered him half the dog. Cuchulain ate, and it was with his
left hand he took the piece, and he placed part of it under his left
thigh, and his left hand and his left thigh were cursed, and the curse
reached all his left side, which from his head to his feet lost a great
part of its power."
At last Cuchulain meets the enemy on his ancestral patri-
mony of Moy Muirtheimhne, drawn up in battle array, with
shield to shield as though it were one solid plank that was
around them. Cuchulain displays his feats from his chariot,
especially " his three thunder-feats — the thunder of an hundred,
the thunder of three hundred, the thunder of thrice nine
1 It was geis, or tabu, to him to behold the exposed breast of a woman.
See above, p. 301.
z These are in my version the three daughters of Calatin.
THE DEATH OF CUCHULAIN 349
"He played equally with spear, shield, and sword, he performed
all the feats of a warrior. As many as there are of grains of sand in
the sea, of stars in the heaven, of dewdrops in May, of snowflakes
in winter, of hailstones in a storm, of leaves in a forest, of ears of corn
in the plains of Bregia, of sods beneath the feet of the steeds of Erin
on a summer's day, so many halves of heads, and halves of shields, and
halves of hands and halves of feet, so many red bones were scattered
by him throughout the plain of Muirtheimhne, it became grey with
the brains of his enemies, so fierce and furious was Cuchulain's
onslaught."
The plan which Ere, son of the late High-king Cairbre
Niafer had adopted was to place two men pretending to fight
with one another upon each flank of the army and a druid
standing near who should first make Cuchulain separate the
combatants, and should then demand from him his spear, since
there ran a prophecy to the effect that Cuchulain's spear should
kill a king, but if they could get the spear from him they at
least would be safe from the prophecy ; it would not be one of
them who should be slain by it.
Cuchulain separates the fighters as the druid asks him, by
killing each of them with a blow.
" ' You have separated them/ said the druid, * they shall do each
other no more harm.'
" * They would not be so silenced,' said Cuchulain, ' hadst thou not
prayed me to interfere between them.'
" ' Give me thy spear, O Cuchulain,' said the druid.
" ' I swear by the oath which my nation swears,' said Cuchulain,
'you have no greater need of the spear than I. All the warriors
of Erin are come together against me, and I must defend myself.'
" ' If thou refuse me/ said the druid, ' I shall solemnly utter against
thee a magic curse.'
" ' Up to this time/ replied Cuchulain, ' no curse has ever been
levelled against me for any act of refusal on my part.' "
And with that he reversed his spear and threw it at the druid
butt foremost, killing him and nine more. Lewy, the son of
Curigh, immediately picked it up.
" ' Whom,' said he to the children of Calatin, ' is this to
overthrow ? '
350 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
" ' It is a king whom that spear shall slay,' said they.
Lewy hurled it at Cuchulain's chariot, and it pierced Laeg,
his charioteer.
Cuchulain bade his charioteer farewell.
" c To-day,' said Cuchulain, * I shall be both warrior and
charioteer.' "
The same incident happens again. Cuchulain kills the second
druid in the same way, and his spear is picked up by Ere.
" ' Children of Calatin,' said Ere, ' what exploit shall this spear
perform ? '
" ' It shall overthrow a king,' said they.
" ' You said this spear would overthrow a king when Lewy hurled
it some time ago/ said Ere.
" ' Nor were we deceived,' said they, ' that spear has brought down
the king of the charioteers of Ireland, Laeg, the son of Riangabhra,
Cuchulain's charioteer.' "
Ere hurls the spear and it passes through the side of Cuchu-
lain's noble steed, the Liath Macha. Cuchulain took a fond
farewell of the animal who galloped with half the yoke around
its neck to the lake from whence he had first taken it, on the
mountain of Fuad in far-off Armagh.
The third time a druid demands his spear, and is killed by
Cuchulain, who throws it to him handle foremost. The spear
is picked up this time by Lewy son of Curigh.
" ' What feat shall this spear perform, ye children of Calatin ? '
said Lewy.
" ' It shall overthrow a king,' said they.
" ' Ye said as much when Ere hurled it this morning,' answered
Lewy.
" ' Yes,' answered the children of Calatin, ' and our word was true.
The spear which Ere hurled has wounded mortally the king of the
steeds of Ireland, the Liath Macha.'
" ' I swear then/ said Lewy, ' by the oath which my nation swears,
that Erc's blow smote not the king which this spear is to slay.' "
Then Lewy hurls the spear, and this time pierces Cuchulain
through the body, and Cuchulain's other steed burst the yoke
THE DEATH OF CUCHULAIN 351
and rushed off and never ceased till he, too, had plunged into the
lake from which Cuchulain had taken him in far-off Munster.1
Cuchulain remained behind, dying in his chariot. With difficulty
and holding in his entrails with one hand, he advanced to a
little lake hard by, and drank from it, and washed off his blood.
Then he propped himself against a high stone a few yards from
the lake, and tied himself to it with his girdle. " He did not
wish to die either sitting or lying, it was standing," says the
saga, " that he wished to meet death."
But his grey steed, the Liath Macha,2 returned once more to
defend his lord, and made three terrible charges, scattering with
tooth and hoof all who would approach the stone where Cuchu-
lain was dying. At last a bird was seen to alight upon his
shoulder. " Yon pillar used not to be a settling place for birds,"
said Ere. They knew then that he was dead. Lewy, the son
of Curigh, seized him by the back hair and severed his head
from his body.
But Cuchulain was too important an epic hero to thus finish
with him. Another very celebrated, but probably later Epopee
tells of how his friend Conall Cearnach pursued the retreating
army and exacted vengeance for his death. A brief digest of
Conall's revenge is contained in the Book of Leinster, but modern
copies of much longer and more literary versions exist, and there
was no more celebrated poem amongst the later Gael than that
1 The belief in water-horses is quite common even still amongst the old
people in all parts of Connacht, and, I think, over the most of Ireland.
2 With the Liath Macha so renowned throughout the whole Cuchulain
saga compare Areion, the celebrated steed of Adrastus, who saved his
master at the rout of the Argeian chiefs round Thebes. The Liath Macha
returns to the water from whence it came, and Areion, too, was believed
to have been the offspring of Poseidon. He is alluded to by Nestor in the
Iliad xxiii. 346 :
OVK ea9' og KB ff'eXyat fJaraX^voQ ovdt irapeXQy,
ovd' et Kev /uer67rt<£<r0ei> 'Apeiova <hov eXavvoi,
'ASprjarov ra^vv 'ITTTTOV og «K Qtofyiv y'tvog ijev.
He appears, however, to have been black not grey. Hesiod alludes to him
as p.kyav ITTTTOV Aptiova Kvavo^aiTtiv.
352 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
called the Lay of the Heads in which Conall Cearnach returns to
Emer, Cuchulain's wife, to Emania, with a large bundle of heads
strung upon a gad, or withy-wand, thrust through their mouths
from cheek to cheek, and there explains in a lay to Emer who
they were.
In the ancient version in the Book of Leinster it is only
Lewy who is slain by Conall. In my more modern recension
he slays Ere and the children of Calatin as well, and recovers
the head of Cuchulain, which he found being used as a football
by two men near Tara. " If this city," said he of Tara,
"were Erc's own lordship and patrimony I would burn it
down, but since it is the very navel and meeting-point of the
men of Ireland, I shall affront it no more."
Emer's joy and her grief on recovering her husband's head are
touchingly described.
"She washed clean the head and she joined it on to its body, and
she pressed it to her heart and her bosom, and fell to lamenting and
heavily sorrowing over it, and began to suck in its blood and to drink
it,1 and she placed around the head a lovely satin cloth. ' Ochone ! '
said she, ' good was the beauty of this head, although it is low this
day, and it is many of the kings and princes of the world would be
keening it if they thought it was like this ; and the men who demand
gold and treasure, and ask petitions of the men of Erin and Alba
[i.e., the poets and druids] thou wast their one love and their one
choice of the men of the earth, and woe for me that I remain behind
this day ; for there was not of the women of Erin, nor in the whole
great world, a woman mated with a husband, or unmated, not a single
one, who, until this day, was not envious of me ; for many were the
goods and jewels and rents and tributes from the countries of the world
that thou broughtest to me, with the valour and strength of thy
hand,' and she took his hand in hers and fell to making lamentations
over it, and to telling of its fame and its exploits, and 't was what
she said, 'Alas !' said she, ' it is many of the kings and of the chieftains
and of the strong men of the world that fell by this hand, and it is
1 " Do rinne an ceann do niamhghlanadh agus do chuir ar a chollain fein e,
agus do dhruid re na h-ucht agus n-a h-urbhruinne e, agus do ghaibh ag
tuirse agus ag trom-mheala os a chionn, agus do ghaibh ag sughadh a
choda fola agus ag a h-6l," etc. This was to express affection. Deirdre
does the same when her husband is slain, she laps his blood.
THE DEATH OF CUCHULAIN 353
many of the goods and treasures of this world that were scattered
by it upon poets and men of knowledge,' and she spake the lay,
" ' Ochone O head, Ochone O head,' " etc.
Afterwards Conall Cearnach arrives with his pile of heads
and planted them carefully "all round about the wide grass-
green lawn " upon pointed sticks, and relates to Emer who they
were and how they fell.1
"Thereafter," says the saga, "Emer desired Conall to make
a wide very deep tomb for Cuchulain," and she laid herself
down in it along with her gentle mate, and she set her mouth
to his mouth, and she spake —
" ' Love of my soul,' she said, ' O friend, O gentle sweetheart, and
O thou one choice of the men of the earth, many is the woman
envied me thee until now, and I shall not live after thee ; ' and her
soul departed out of her, and she herself and Cuchulain were laid in
the one grave by Conall, and he raised their stone over their tomb,
and he wrote their names in Ogam, and their funeral games were
performed by him and by the Ultonians.
"THUS FAR THE RED ROUT OF CONALL CEARNACH."
1 This is the celebrated Laoi na gceann, or Lay of the Heads, which
begins by Emer asking —
" A Chonaill cia h-iad na cinn ?
Is dearbh linn gar dheargais h-airm,
Na cinn o tharla ar an ngad
Slointear leat na fir d'ar baineadh."
It was popular in the Highlands also. There is a copy in the book of the
Dean of Lismore, published by Cameron in his " Reliquiae Celticae," vol. i.
p. 66. Also in the Edinburgh MSS. 36 and 38. See ibid. pp. 113 and 115.
The piece consists of n6 lines. The oldest form of Emer's lament over
Cuchulain, " Nuallguba Emire," is in the Book of Leinster, p. 123, a. 20.
It is a kind of unrhymed chant. The lament I have given is from my
own modern manuscript.
CHAPTER XXVIII
OTHER SAGAS OF THE RED BRANCH
ANOTHER saga belonging to this cycle affords so curious a
picture of pagan customs that it is worth while to give here
some extracts from it. This is the story of Mac Datho's Pig
and Hound, which is contained in the Book of Leinster, a
MS. copied about the year 1150. It was first published with-
out a translation by Windisch in his " Irische Texte," from the
Book of Leinster copy collated with two others. It has since
been translated by Kuno Meyer from a fifteenth-century
vellum.1 The story runs as follows.
Mac Datho was a famous landholder in Leinster, and he
possessed a hound so extraordinarily strong and swift that it
could run round Leinster in a day. All Ireland was full of
the fame of that hound, and every one desired to have it. It
struck Meve and Oilioll, king and queen of Connacht, to
send an embassy to Mac Datho to ask him for his hound, at
the same time that the notion came to Conor, king of Ulster,
that he also would like to possess it. Two embassies reach
Mac Datho's house at the same time, the one from Connacht
and the other from Ulster, and both ask for the hound for their
respective masters. Mac Datho's house was one of those open
1 " Hibernica Minora," p. 57, from Rawlinson B. 512, in the Bodleian
Library. I have followed his excellent translation nearly verbatim.
354
OTHER SAGAS OF THE RED BRANCH 355
hostelries T of which there were five at that time in Ireland.
" Seven doors," says the saga, " there were in each hostelry, seven
roads through it, and seven fireplaces therein. Seven caldrons in
the seven fireplaces. An ox and a salted pig would go into each of
these caldrons, and the man that came along the road would (i.e.,
any traveller who passed the way was entitled to) thrust the flesh
fork into the caldron, and whatever he brought up with the first
thrust, that he would eat, and if nothing were brought up with the
first thrust there was no other for him."
The messengers are brought before Mac Datho to his bed,
and questioned as to the cause of their coming.
"'To ask for the hound are we come,' said the messengers of
Connacht, ' from Oilioll and from Meve, and in exchange for it there
shall be given three score hundred milch cows at once, and a chariot
with the two horses that are best in Connacht under it, and as much
again at 'the end of the year besides all that.'
" ' We, too, have come to ask for it,' said the messengers of Ulster,
' and Conor is no worse a friend than Oilioll and Meve, and the same
amount shall be given from the north (i.e., from the Ultonians) and
be added to, and there will be good friendship from it continually.'
" Mac Datho fell into a great silence, and was three days and
nights without sleeping, nor could he eat food for the greatness
of his trouble, but was moving about from one side to another. It
was then his wife addressed him and said, ' Long is the fast in
which thou art,' said she; 'there is plenty of food by thee, though
thou dost not eat it.'
" And then she said —
" Sleeplessness was brought
To Mac Datho into his house.
There was something on which he deliberated
Though he speaks to none.3
He turns away from me to the wall,
The Hero of the Fene of fierce valour,
His prudent wife observes
That her mate is without sleep."
A dialogue in verse follows. The wife advises her husband
1 In Old Irish, Bruiden ; in modern, Bruidhean (Bree-an).
2 " TucacHurbaid chotulta / do Mac Datho co a thech.
Ros boi ni no chomairled / cen co labradar fri nech."
356 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
to promise the hound to both sets of messengers. In his
perplexity he weakly decides to do this. After the messengers
had stayed with him for three nights and days, feasting, he
called to him first the envoys of Connacht and said to them —
" ' I was in great doubt and perplexity, and this is what is grown
out of it, that I have given the hound to Oilioll and Meve, and let
them come for it splendidly and proudly, with as many warriors
and nobles as they can get, and they shall have drink and food and
many gifts besides, and shall take the hound and be welcome/
" He also went with the messengers of Ulster and said to them,
' After much doubting I have given the hound to Conor, and let him
and the flower of the province come for it proudly, and they shall
have many other gifts and you shall be welcome/ But for one and
the same day he made his tryst with them all."
Accordingly on the appointed day the warriors and men of
each province arrive at his hostelry in great state and pomp.
"He himself went to meet them and bade them welcome. "Tis
welcome ye are, O warriors,' said he, ' come within into the close/
" Then they went over, and into the hostelry ; one half of the
house for the men of Connacht and the other half for the men of
Ulster. That house was not a small one. Seven doors in it and
fifty beds between (every) two doors. Those were not faces of
friends at a feast, the people who were in that house, for many of
them had injured other. For three hundred years before the
birth of Christ there had been war between them.1
" ' Let the pig be killed for them/ said Mac Datho."
This celebrated pig had been fed for seven years on the
milk of three score milch cows, and it was so huge that it took
sixty men to draw it when slain. Its tail alone was a load for
nine men.
" < The pig is good,' " said Conor, king of Ulster.
" c It is good/ " said Oilioll, king of Connacht.
Then there arose a difficulty about the dividing of the pig.
As in the case of the " heroes bit " the best warrior was to
1 But especially since Fergus mac Roigh or Roy had deserted Ulster
and gone over to Connacht on the death of Deirdre.
OTHER SAGAS OF THE RED BRANCH 357
divide it. King Oilioll asked King Conor what they should
do about it, when suddenly the mischievous, ill-minded Bricriu
spoke from a chamber overhead and asked, " How should it
be divided except by a contest of arms seeing that all the
valorous warriors of Connacht were there."
" ' Let it be so/ said Oilioll.
" ' We like it well,' said Conor, ' for we have lads in the house
who have many a time gone round the border.'
" ' There will be need of thy lads to-night, O Conor,' said a famous
old warrior from Cruachna Conalath in the west. ' The roads of
Luachra Dedad have often had their backs turned to them (as they
fled). Many, too, the fat beeves they left with me.'
""Twas a fat beef thou leftest with me,' said Munremar
mac Gerrcind, ' even thine own brother, Cruithne mac Ruaidlinde
from Cruachna Conalath of Connacht.'
"'He was no better,' said Lewy mac Conroi, 'than Irloth, son of
Fergus, son of Leite, who was left dead by Echbel, son of Dedad,
at Tara Luachra.'
" ' What sort of man do ye think,' said Celtchair mac Uthechair,
'was Conganchnes, son of (that same) Dedad, who was slain by
myself, and me to strike the head off him ? '
" Each of them brought up his exploits in the face of the other,
till at last it came to one man who beat every one, even Get
mac Magach of Connacht.1
" He raised his prowess over the host, and took his knife in his
hand, and sat down by the pig. ' Now let there be found/ said he,
' among the men of Ireland one man to abide contest with me, or
let me divide the pig.'
" There was not at that time found a warrior of Ulster to stand up
to him, and great silence fell upon them.
" ' Stop that for me, O Laeghaire [Leary] / said Conor, [King of
Ulster, i.e., ' Delay, if you can, Cet's dividing the pig '] .
He is well known in the Ultonian saga. Keating describes him in
history as a " mighty warrior of the Connachtmen, and a fierce wolf
evil to the men of Ulster." It was he who gave King Conor the wound
which, after nine years, he died. He was eventually slain by Conall
irnach as he was returning in a heavy fall of snow from a plundering
ccursion in Ulster, carrying three heads with him. See O'Mahony's
iting, p. 274, and Conall Cearnach was taken up for dead and brought
iway by the Connacht men after the fight, but recovered. This evidently
formed the plot of another saga now I think lost.
358 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
" Said Leary, ' It shall not be — Get to divide the pig before the
face of us all ! '
"'Wait a little, Leary,' said Get, 'that thou mayest speak with
me. For it is a custom with you men of Ulster that every youth
among you who takes arms makes us his first goal.1 Thou, too,
didst come to the border, and thus leftest charioteer and chariot
and horses with me, and thou didst then escape with a lance
through thee. Thou shalt not get at the pig in that manner ! '
" Leary sat down upon his couch.
" ' It shall not be,' said a tall, fair warrior of Ulster, coming out of
his chamber above, ' that Get divide the pig.'
"' Who is this?' said Get.
" ' A better warrior than thou,' say all, 'even Angus, son of Hand-
wail of Ulster.'
" ' Why is his father called Hand-wail ? ' said Get.
" ' We know not indeed,' say all.
" ' But I know,' said Get ; ' once I went eastward (i.e., crossed the
border into Ulster), an alarm-cry is raised around me, and Hand-
wail came up with me, like every one else. He makes a cast of a
large lance at me. I make a cast at him with the same lance, which
struck off his hand, so that it was (i.e., fell) on the field before him.
What brings the son of that man to stand up to me ? ' said Get.
" Then Angus goes to his couch.
" ' Still keep up the contest,' said Get, ' or let me divide the
Pig-'
" ' It is not right that thou divide it, O Get,' said another tall, fair
warrior of Ulster.
"'Who is this?' said Get.
" ' Owen Mor, son of Durthacht,' say all, ' king of Fernmag.' *
" ' I have seen him before/ said Get.
" ' Where hast thou seen me,' said Owen.
" ' In front of thine own house when I took a drove of cattle from
thee ; the alarm cry was raised in the land around me, and thou
didst meet me and didst cast a spear at me, so that it stood out of
my shield. I cast the same spear at thee, which passed through thy
1 This is what Cuchulain also does the day he assumes arms for the
first time. The story of his doings on that day and his foray into
Connacht as recited by Fergus to Oilioll and Meve forms one of the most
interesting episodes of the Tain Bo Chuailgne. Every young Ultonian
on assuming arms made a raid into Connacht.
a It was he who, in the oldest version of the Deirdre saga, slew Naoise,
and it was to him Conor made Deirdre over at the end of a year. See
above p. 317.
OTHER SAGAS OF THE RED BRANCH 359
head and struck thine eye out of thy head, and the men of Ireland
see thee with one eye ever since.'
"He sat down in his seat after that.
" ' Still keep up the contest, men of Ulster/ said Cet, ' or let me
divide the pig.'
" ' Thou shalt not divide it/ said Munremar, son of Gerrcend.
" ' Is that Munremar ? ' said Cet.
" ' It is he/ say the men of Ireland.
"'It was I who last cleaned my hands in thee, O Munremar/
said Cet; 'it is not three days yet since out of thine own land I
carried off three warriors' heads from thee, together with the head
of thy first son.'
" Munremar sat down on his seat.
"'Still the contest/ said Cet, 'or I shall divide the pig.'
" ' Verily thou shalt have it/ said a tall, grey, very terrible warrior
of the men of Ulster.
"'Who is this?' said Cet.
'"That is Celtchair, son of Uithechar/ say all.
" ' Wait a little, Celtchair/ said Cet, ' unless thou comest to strike
me. I came, O Celtchair, to the front of thy house. The alarm was
raised around me. Every one went after me. Thou comest like
every one else, and going into a gap before me didst throw a spear
at me. I threw another spear at thee, which went through thy
loins, nor has either son or daughter been born to thee since."
" After that Celtchair sat down on his seat.
" ' Still the contest/ said Cet, ' or I shall divide the pig.'
" ' Thou shalt have it/ said Mend, son of Sword-heel.
"'Who is this?' said Cet.
" ' Mend/ say all.
" ' What ! deem you/ said Cet, ' that the sons of churls with
nicknames should come to contend with me ? for it was I was the
priest, x who christened thy father by that name, since it is I that
cut off his heel, so that he carried but one heel away with him.
What should bring the son of that man to contend with me ? '
" Mend sat down in his seat.
" ' Still the contest/ said Cet, ' or I shall divide the pig.'
" ' Thou shalt have it/ said Cumscraidh, the stammerer of Macha,
son of Conor.
"'Who is this?'
" ' That is Cumscraidh/ say all.
" He is the makings of a king, so far as his figure goes. ...
This phrase, introduced by a Christian reciter or copyist, need not in
least take away from the genuine pagan character of the whole.
360 LITERARY HISTORY OF IRELAND
" t Well/ said Get, ' thou madest thy first raid on us. We met on
the border. Thou didst leave a third of thy people with me, and
earnest away with a spear through thy throat, so that no word comes
rightly over thy lips, since the sinews of thy throat were wounded,
so that Cumscraidh, the stammerer of Macha, is thy name ever since.'
" In that way he laid disgrace and a blow on the whole province.
"While he made ready with the pig and had his knife in his
hand, they see Conall Cedrnach [the Victorious], coming towards
them into the house. He sprang on to the floor of the house.
The men of Ulster gave him great welcome. 'Twas then [King]
Conor threw his helmet from his head and shook himself [for
joy] in his own place. 'We are glad/ said Conall, 'that our
portion is ready for us, and who divides for you ? ' said Conall.
"One man of the men of Ireland has obtained by contest the
dividing of it, to wit, Get mac Magach.
" ' Is that true, Get ?' said Conall, ' art thou dividing the pig ?'
There follows here an obscure dialogue in verse between
the warriors.
" ' Get up from the pig, Get/ said Conall.
" ' What brings thee to it ? ' said Get.
"'Truly [for you] to seek contest from me,' said Conall, 'and I
shall give you contest ; I swear what my people swear since I
[first] took spear and weapons, I have never been a day without
having slain a Connachtman, nor a night without plundering, nor
have I ever slept without the head of a Connachtman under my
knee/
" ' It is true,' said Get, ' thou art even a better warrior than I, but if
Anluan mac Magach [my brother] were in the house/ said Get, ' he
would match thee contest for contest, and it is a pity that he is not
in the house this night.'
" ' Aye, is he, though/ said Conall, taking the head of Anluan from
his belt and throwing it at Cet's chest, so that a gush of blood broke
over his lips. After that Conall sat down by the pig and Cet went
from it.
" ' Now let them come to the contest/ said Conall.
" Truly there was not then found among the men of Connacht a
warrior to stand up to him in contest, for they were loath to be slain
on the spot. The men of Ulster made a cover around him with
their shields, for there was an evil custom in the house, the people
of one side throwing stones at the other side. Then Conall pro-
ceeded to divide the pig, and he took the end of the tail in his
mouth until he had finished dividing the pig."
OTHER SAGAS OF THE RED BRANCH 361
The men of Connacht, as might be expected, were not
pleased with their share. The rest of the piece recounts the
battle that ensued both in the hostelry, whence " seven streams
of blood burst through its seven doors," and outside in the
close or liss after the hosts had burst through the doors, the
death of the hound, the flight of Oilioll and Meve into
Connacht, and the curious adventures of their charioteer.
The Conception of Cuchulain,1 the Conception of Conor,2
the Wooing of Emer, 3 the Death of Conlaoch, 4 the
Siege of Howth,S the Intoxication of the Ultonians,6
Bricriu's Banquet,7 Emer's Jealousy and Cuchulain's Pining,8
the Battle of Rosnaree,9 Bricriu's Feast and the Exile
of the Sons of Dael Dermuit,10 Macha's Curse on the
1 Windisch's "Irische Texte," Erste Serie, 134, and D'Arbois de
Jubainville's " L'epopee Celtique en Irlande," p. 22.
3 D'Arbois de Jubainville's " Epopee Celtique," p. 3.
3 Translated by Kuno Meyer in " Revue Celtique," vol. xi., and " The
Archaeological Review," vol. i., and Jubainvilles' " Epopee Celtique," p. 39.
4 A poem published by Miss Brooke in her " Reliques of Irish Poetry,"
p. 393 of the 2nd Edition of 1816. There are fragmentary versions of it
in the Edinburgh MSS. 65 and 62, published in Cameron's " Reliquiae
Celticae," vol. i. pp. 112 and 161, and in the Sage Pope Collection from the
recitation of a peasant about a hundred years ago, p. 393. The oldest
form of the story is in the Yellow Book of Lecan, and it has been studied
in Jubainville's " Epopee Celtique," p. 52.
s Edited and translated by Stokes in the " Revue Celtique," vol. viii.
p. 49.
6 Translated by Hennessy for Royal Irish Academy, Todd Lecture, Ser. I.
7 The text published by Windisch, " Irische Texte," I. p. 235, and
translated by Jubainville in " Epopee Celtique," p. 81.
8 The text published by Windisch, " Irische Texte,' I. p. 197, and by
O'Curry in " Atlantis," vol. i. p. 362, with translation, and by Gilbert and